


In Kirkwall

by visforvictory



Series: Small Things that Bloom [1]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Cawke, F/M, Innocence Lost, and who is at all surprised by this aside from Cullen himself, cawkeadoodledoo, conclusion to slow burn can be found in And Skyhold :), cullen makes an ill-timed admission, cullen wishes the knight-commander would stop making him attend those damned balls at the keep, cullen’s dubious but undeniable consent, definitely bait, destroyed and utterly stamped on, happyendingIswear, hawke deflowers the young knight-captain of kirkwall, healingcawke
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-01
Updated: 2016-05-16
Packaged: 2018-06-05 07:36:41
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 16
Words: 68,209
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6695713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/visforvictory/pseuds/visforvictory
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Young Knight-Captain Cullen keeps his heart silent and dead, for Kinloch Hold ruined him with dreams dark, disturbing, and profane. For mages are not people, but weapons, and when he wakes screaming in the night the phrase echoes in his ears.</p><p>Then Hawke, apostate, wild and bewitching, saves his life on the Wounded Coast and sets his entire world aflame.</p><p>Cullen strikes a deal with her: she can roam about the city as she pleases, as long as she presents him with a weekly report at the Gallows.</p><p>He takes a phylactery from her, a silver chain to bind her. She takes all he has forgotten he cared about.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. a prologue for kirkwall

**Author's Note:**

  * For [eris](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eris/gifts).

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Between his legs he was limp. Nothing stirred there, not when beautiful noblewomen walked by, nor half-dressed slatterns plying their trade. Only in the night did he jerk awake, dead-flesh fingers haunting his memories, trailing over his skin. Only when the visions in his nightmares appeared did he feel any kind of quickening. Against his will he stirred, and woke, and sobbed.
> 
> In Kinloch Hold, they had shown him what he was.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I got more awesome art from raven-wilde, who is the best!!!!!  
> http://raven-wilde.tumblr.com/post/146962305161/knight-commander-step-down-i-relieve-you-of
> 
> ;________________;

**KIRKWALL**

 

A dead man barely balancing on two feet, Cullen Rutherford heaved his lunch up and over the side of the ship.

 _Why eat, boy. You can't even keep it in._ Captain’s words, ringing in his ears. Curled lips from the ship’s crew. Below-decks they whispered about the templar who stood alone through the storms, who feared to go below, who screamed in the night.

Yawning in front of him at the foot of the Vinmark Mountains, across the Wounded Sea from Ferelden, Kirkwall sat like a weeping sore, a canker of corruption and filth. The City of Chains, sheeted by a haze of torrential rain and blasts of lightning that tore at the sky, relentless. 

As his ship lurched over the roiling waves, past the old brown bones of vessels long-dead and drowned, Cullen swiped the rain out of his eyes and looked up at the statues lining the walls of the port. Mottled stone eyes followed him.

_We know what you’ve done. We see you. What you hide._

In Kinloch Hold. He could have said those three words over and again, the place where his life had ended, where he had become not-Cullen, not-human, not-worthy. In Kinloch Hold. Where they had prised his fears and foolish hopes from his mind.

He could find nothing in common with other young men his age, with the recruits who had trickled into the decimated ranks of Kinloch. They made ribald jokes, joked about whores, bonded with each other. All the things normal young men did. Lived. Fought. Fucked.

Between his legs he was limp. Nothing stirred there, not when beautiful noblewomen walked by, nor half-dressed slatterns plying their trade. Only in the night did he jerk awake, dead-flesh fingers haunting his memories, trailing over his skin. Only when the visions in his nightmares appeared did he feel any kind of quickening. Against his will he stirred, and woke, and sobbed.

In Kinloch Hold, they had shown him what he was.

His gut churned as the boat rocked beneath him, but he stayed, staring out into the dark haze of rain as they passed the leering Twins. The Gallows yawned out of the water, a gloomy black outline against the grey sky. He pulled his hood lower in a vain attempt to block out the spray and rain.

Kirkwall. The Gallows. The eastern seat of Tevinter’s vile empire of enslavement in days gone past. It did not welcome.

Knight-Commander Greagoir had not done him a favour by sending him here, Cullen realized. His parting words to Cullen had expressed a hope that the voyage would calm the turmoil in his soul. The look in his eyes had said he believed otherwise.

Faced with the desolation in front of him, Cullen could only laugh.

As the ship pulled in and docked, Cullen surveyed the courtyard, dotted by statues that seemed to scream endlessly, mouths bubbling over with the rainwater that spilled down the crevices of frozen lips, metal bodies scarred and twisted in the throes of agony. Half-naked, chained, kneeling. Another memorial to the Imperium’s cruelty.

In the midst of all that, the Kirkwall Circle.

Weakness had made him soft in Ferelden. He had failed in his duties. They all had. If they had stopped the madness before it had had a chance to flourish, he might still be there, playing chess with her in the library, craving the impossibility of her smiles.

The memory of the girl who had become a Warden still hurt, even after all these months. She had not succumbed to madness. He had… He would not think on that. He would not.

Instead he forced his thoughts to a vastly different woman. Meredith Stannard, Knight-Commander of Kirkwall, one of the most powerful, ambitious individuals in the Free Marches. Cullen had heard enough about her to be nervous about his appointment.

The lieutenant who greeted him led him past the refugees in the courtyard, to the interior of the Gallows, every bit as imposing as the exterior, if less riddled with statuary. The pounding in his chest subsided slightly, out from the wailing storm and the drowned-metal screams of slaves. Here was silence, here his heart stilled, here he allowed himself to hope.

 

Meredith Stannard was an imposing woman, had probably been beautiful once. Now her face was fixed into a cold mask, and her eyes were blue and hard as glaciers. She nodded at him as he entered her office, waved him into the stiff-backed chair in front of the desk where she sat.

Here was a woman who had taken back the city from Viscount Perrin and yoked it under the Order’s control, who had put Viscount Dumar on the throne.

‘Cullen Rutherford,’ she said in a voice as brittle as her eyes.

‘Knight-Commander,’ he said, wondering if his voice sounded as nervous as he felt.

‘I have here a recommendation for you from Knight-Commander Greagoir.’ She tapped two fingers on the scroll that lay stretched out on her desk. ‘He speaks most highly of you. Tell me, why did he seem so eager to send you to me?’

Cullen fumbled for words, stymied, shamed.

Her eyes bored into him. ‘Why did he send you here?’

‘He thinks I am… in need of rehabilitation,’ he said, his words sounding pathetic. ‘That my views are… excessive.’

‘Excessive.’ The Knight-Commander steepled her fingers, rolled the word on her tongue. ‘Regarding?’

Memory flinched in him, and there he was, kneeling on the hard stone floor and cursing the Amell girl through the haze that was his cage.

Thank the Maker she had not listened to him.

‘Your words, boy. Use them,’ Meredith Stannard said, her fingers reaching out and drumming on the desk directly in front of him. ‘Speak up.’

He would not lie. He told her. It was the first time he had spoken of it since that day, aside from Greagoir’s forced conversations with him about it.

‘Knight-Commander Greagoir had already appealed for the Right of Annulment,’ Meredith said. ‘And then repealed it, like a spineless fool. What did your words matter?’

‘The Warden told us there were innocent mages locked up in the Tower, and I told her... that they were too great a risk to ignore. I thought the entire Circle needed to be purged. I was wrong.’

‘I see,’ Meredith said. ‘Only a fool would have allowed Uldred to run rampant to begin with.’ The scorn leaked out from between her pursed lips.

What could he say? He had cursed Greagoir himself a thousand times over in his thoughts, while guts and flesh and blood spilled out over split templar shells. But Greagoir had been right, and Cullen was a broken fool.

‘Hmm,’ was all she said for a while.

Cullen shifted uneasily in his seat, dread rising in his stomach, certain he was about to be kicked out of the Order.

‘I will not falter again, Knight-Commander,’ he said slowly. ‘I was weak.’

‘And yet he tells me that out of all the Templars behind that sealed door, you were the only one who survived,’ she said. ‘That you did not break, that the sheer force of your will kept you alive. That there is much I could do with you. If I agreed you were capable.’

He blinked. Had Greagoir said that? A million emotions ran through him. A fleeting glimpse at redemption. The fear that still tainted him. The hate.

‘So now you hate all mages,’ the Knight-Commander said, as though piercing his mind. ‘You want them broken, in chains, tranquilized. Is that not right?’ Her eyes had not left him, not once, as though everything he was saying would be  forever frozen in that blue.

‘No,’ he said, though it surprised him to hear the word come from his own lips. He was uncertain about the direction of the conversation. She waited for him to say more. ‘But I have seen what happens when we are too lenient with our charges.’

Flesh smeared across the walls, a manufactured mockery of  _her_  face, a mass of shrieking, crying blood and _…_  He forced the image out of his mind.

‘I thought, before all this happened, that mages were just the same as you and I, that they should have more rights, even – and then… I saw…’

His brothers, torn apart by the abominations that took them screaming to their deaths, and worse. Pity the ones who had lingered. Those who had clung to the shredded strands of their flesh as demons filleted them. How long had they taken to die?

And Cullen in his cage, too narrow to lie down in, too low to stand fully in so he could only kneel on the biting cold stones. Preserved only because a desire demon had seen what secret he had buried inside him. Wanted him to renounce his vows. Laughed at the preposterous fantasies hidden in his heart, a templar infatuated with his charge. Revelled in the guilt that rose from that illicit desire.

‘Yes,’ Meredith said. ‘I have a fair idea of what you saw. I, of all people, know that far too well.’

But she did not. She would not. He had never told anyone the truth of it, the real darkness buried inside him. That shame that he refused to acknowledge, save for when the nightmares dragged him back into the thick of it. That, he could not tell her.

She was silent for a moment, still regarding him. For a moment he feared she could see the images that had flashed into his mind. Robes, hiked up around soft thighs. Long nights of yearning. And the demon, clad in her flesh, offering him what he had always wanted. _She leaned down over him, hands sliding over him, her mouth travelling lower. At first it was good, so good, her breath and her body warm on him. Cullen, Cullen... be mine. Forever._

_You're hurting me. It was her and not her. He wanted to stop but couldn't. Wouldn't. What was that, that sickly streak of carmine that rolled over the floor and her flesh in thick crimson rivulets? What was real?_

_Be mine, and all this will pass._

The Knight-Commander spoke, and he pushed those thoughts out of his mind. They were never far from him.

‘I need someone whose duty is to the Chantry and to the innocents of Thedas,’ she said. ‘I will not have abominations tearing Kirkwall to ruin. And I do not believe your ideals are, as Greagoir puts it, excessive. Keep your beliefs and your faith, Cullen, and perhaps we will see how far you rise.’

She dismissed him then, sending someone to show him to his austere quarters.

***

With a worn sigh, Cullen looked out at the view of Kirkwall from his spartan cell. Two empty beds; his roommate had still not materialised. He recited the Chant of Light, breathed the humid air, and pressed his head against the window bars.

From the window he watched a dark-haired girl around his own age, having a heated discussion with a guardsman. Most of the refugees had a hopeless look to them. They sat in small huddles on the ground. This girl was thin, wiry, her cheeks hollow, but there was something about the jaunty tilt of her chin, the determined set of her jaw, the challenge in her eyes, the way she angled her hips where she stood.

He was shaken by his conversation with the Knight-Commander. He had thought himself half-insane, a pariah reviled by the rest of the Tower. They had shown him no love for having escaped. Instead they shot him suspicious glances. None would share a room with him. What had he promised the demons, to escape without even a scratch? He heard what they said about him, that he screamed in the night, that he had been corrupted beyond reason, that he was mad, a lunatic, a fool.

Meredith had simply nodded. He didn’t know what he felt. Relief, certainly. A hollow dream of redemption. Hope, but still the echoes in his head, voices he would never forget, screams, pain. The thought that if the Warden had listened to him, Irving and the rest of the mages locked in that prison would have died. Because of his blind hatred.

He turned back to the girl at the foot of the Gallows, still arguing with the guard on the stairs. The man held out his hand, palm facing out, practically shoving her away.

With a last, baleful look, the girl turned and slipped into the crowd, and Cullen lost sight of her. He surveyed the docks. It didn’t seem fair that his countrymen were kept out in the rain and the wet. Shanties made from thin board and cloth had sprung up all over the courtyards. Meredith refused to allow them entry. She said the citizens of Kirkwall were their duty, not problems that came on boats from Ferelden.

 _Problems._  Just like the mages. He thought himself aligned with Meredith's thinking, but sometimes he questioned, and had to remind himself what happened when leniency prevailed.

He wondered why the Ferelden girl had caught and held his attention. She was covered in dust and spattered blood, Maker knew from what. Then he knew. The look on her face. The cold fire in her eyes. Like him, she had survived.

 _You did not break_ , Meredith had said. But she was wrong. A part of him had stayed locked inside that cage, screaming wordlessly, broken into so many sad splinters he could never be put back together.

 _Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and the wicked,_  Cullen said softly, standing at the window, hands white-knuckled around the iron bars.  _I will not falter_.

 

 

**ALONE**

As it had been after his ordeal, before leaving Kinloch Hold, he sat alone at the afternoon mess in the Gallows. Though he received the occasional stare, nobody seemed to want to speak with him. He made no effort himself. After the long months of sitting at Kinloch’s mess hall by himself, he was used to it. Welcomed it, even. He had always preferred solitude to the company of others and the awkwardness of social niceties.

So it was that he found himself zoning out, thinking about what Meredith had said, about the possibilities of a fresh start. The chance to make right what he had failed at before.

The clink of dishes and dragging of tables snapped him out of his reverie, to the realisation that he was the only one left in the mess hall, and he dropped his half-touched plate off with the servants and made his way back to his quarters.

The hallways felt alien, unwelcoming, built to odd proportions. The pillars soared to absurdly high ceilings, reaching up with sharp angles and stern edges. In the vague candlelight, their shadows formed stepped teeth.

He did not consider himself superstitious, despite his experiences. Still, the Gallows made him feel uncertain and on edge. The bruted bones of the halls sang of darkness and evil deeds. Lost in his thoughts, he crashed into a group of templars coming around the corner.

‘I’m sorry,’ he said. ‘I was looking for my quarters.’

Broad and bald, with beady, leering eyes that drilled through Cullen. The large templar who’d taken the brunt of Cullen’s clumsiness gave him a nasty once-over from head to toe.

‘That’s Ser Alrik to you,’ the man said. ‘You can just call me Ser.’

He pushed forward, thrusting his face into Cullen's.

'Who are you, Meredith's new pet?’ He laughed. Despite it being daylight, the stench of alcohol was rank on his breath, to Cullen’s disgust. This was new to him. Within the Ferelden Circle, for all its problems, templars had always remained civil to each other, save for perhaps Cullen himself.

‘Ser Cullen,’ he said, holding his ground. ‘From Ferelden.’

Alrik’s nose was an inch from Cullen’s forehead. The man was huge.

‘Oh,’ Alrik said with a sneer. ‘The little dog lord.’

Cullen opened his mouth to reply, and then Alrik punched him in the jaw, sending him stumbling to the side. His hand went to his sword, but someone else had a hold of his sword arm, and another knight held the other.

Alrik reversed his blade and sent the pommel crashing into Cullen’s face, and the only thing in his mind as pain washed over him and his jaw cracked sharply, was  _I deserve this._

 

*******

 

He awoke with bruises all over. Sheets, a pillow under his head, armour removed, piled neatly in a corner of the room.

'See you're up,' the other occupant of the room said. Blearily, Cullen realised he was in his quarters. A gaunt, dark-haired man came over and peered down at him.

'You look a mess,' he remarked. 'Lucky I found you when I did. Alrik wanted to break more than your face.'

Cullen's head throbbed. His jaw ached. The sour tang of iron filled his mouth.

He struggled to a sitting position, and a sharp pang of pain shot through his side. His rib. Broken after all. 'You found me?' he asked, trying not to move.

'Alrik doesn't seem to like you. Because, you know.' He gestured at Cullen's face. 'Pretty. Perhaps you should feel flattered.'

'I don't think I do,' Cullen said. He groaned despite his best efforts as he tried to stand, and gave up for a bit. The bruises extended all the way down his legs, too.

He extended his hand. ‘Cullen.’

‘I know,’ the man said. ‘Your reputation preceded you.’ He took Cullen’s hand, shook it warmly. ‘I am Samson.’

‘My reputation?’ He shouldn’t have asked. He knew the answer already.

‘Well, that you were the only survivor of the Ferelden Circle,’ Samson said slowly, watching him. He seemed to be waiting for elaboration.

‘It was unpleasant,’ Cullen said simply. ‘I was lucky.’

When it became apparent he would speak no more on the matter, Samson changed the subject. ‘Do you need a hand?’

Cullen tested his legs again. They were still unsteady. 'I'll be fine,’ he said.

There was a knock on the door. 'Healer, ser,'  the voice behind it said.

'Come in,' Samson called.

A mage entered the room, carrying a plain wooden staff and a healer's case of salves. 'Sers.'

'Maddox,' Samson said in a rather familiar manner. Cullen eyed their exchange. He had once been on the same page as Samson, had thought of his charges as friends, not... demons waiting to break free.

'Ser Samson,' the mage said. 'Ser Cullen.'

'How did you know my name?' Cullen asked, before he could fetter the suspicion in his voice.

'I told him when I summoned him here, of course,' Samson said, cocking his head at Cullen. 'It's not that odd, you know.'

'My apologies,' Cullen muttered, rubbing his head, which was exploding with the worst headache he'd ever had.

Maddox crossed the room and inspected the damage Ser Alrik had done. 'It should be an easy fix,' he said, half to Cullen, half to Samson. 'Let me, ser.'

Cullen let his hands fall to his sides and let the mage do his work. Magic washed over him, so much like lyrium. It brought back all the memories in an overpowering tide. He jerked away from the mage.

'Sorry, ser,' Maddox said, startled. 'I didn't mean--'

 _Control yourself,_  Cullen told himself, sharply, though he almost told the mage to get out. He had to control his reactions. He would come into contact over and again with magic. He had to cope with it, not run away.

'It wasn't your fault,' he said, and waited patiently this time until he was done, though the pulse of energy that flowed through him made him feel almost sick with remembered pain. Magic was pain, for him, inextricably linked to his prison in the Tower.

'Good as new,' Samson said placidly. If he noticed Cullen's oddness, he said nothing. 'Well done,' he said to Maddox. 'Later.'

Maddox bowed and left.

'How lenient is this Circle?' Cullen asked, a question that made Samson raise an eyebrow.

‘We have all the power,’ Samson said. ‘They are our charges. You know that, don’t you?’ He frowned. ‘I heard… rumours about Ferelden. About you.’

‘And?’ Cullen continued to lace up his boots.

‘That you called for the Right. That you thought the Circle should be annulled.’ The look he gave Cullen was not particularly pleasant.

‘I didn’t,’ Cullen said, finally standing up and meeting the other templar’s gaze. ‘But I agreed with it. I thought the Circle lost.’

It felt odd to make that admission now. He had said it to three people. Gregoir. Meredith. Now Samson, who carried messages for mages, who had nothing but compassion for their lot in Kirkwall. What anger he’d once had had mellowed into a pressing duty to never let Kinloch Hold happen again. Especially in a city the size of Kirkwall, already overcrowded, Ferelden refugees thronging the edges of the docks. Meredith had told him how her sister had been possessed, had killed seventy innocents.

Samson's voice snapped him out of his reverie. ‘You do not think Kirkwall’s methods are harsh? I had heard Ferelden had a better idea of how to treat mages.’

‘Perhaps you heard how that worked out,’ Cullen said bitterly. ‘You weren’t there to see it.’

‘A word of advice,’ the older man said. ‘Your youth will betray you if you let it. Harness your anger and your nightmares, or men like Alrik will eat you alive.’

Cullen turned to retort, but Samson was already heading away.

 

 

**NIGHT TERRORS**

 

He was in the Circle again, with the weight of the cage pressing into his ribs. He floated in and out of consciousness. When he opened his eyes, he saw. The first time, he thought himself in a dark dream, found himself reaching for his lyrium vial. But when he went to move his hand, he found his wrist would not move. His entire arm was bound. Then, he realised, his other arm. He opened his eyes, and willed himself to stand, and his body would not obey.

She came to him then, forbidden, pressing against him. Night after night, variations on a theme. First she touched him, slid her hands low on his skin. Then she pressed her mouth to his lips, lower, her tongue slipping over him. Then she would hurt him, claws ripping free of her skin, tongue and teeth long, profane.

He could never see her face. She was a million women, a blur from blonde to auburn to black, to white, to other. She was every woman he had ever dreamed of, manifest in his bed.

She tore at his skin. His blood soaked his clothes, left him enervated, limbs refusing to obey. When she bent her face to his, there was no part of it that was human. She raked her talons through his flesh, laid skin and muscle and gristle aside, found the nerves buried beneath. When he felt her teeth, he screamed, though he had already been screaming.

It was the most common of his nightmares. After a year of seeing it, he thought he might at least have become immune to it. But no, each time it hurt just as much as the time before. Sometimes more. But it was the nightmare he prayed would come.

The others were the ones he feared most, the reason he shrank back into himself, why he was dead inside. The ones he couldn't voice.  _Pushing her down, ignoring her screams. Monster._

Someone was shaking him, and Cullen sat up, his spine drenched in sweat. His hand went for his blade. Another reason he kept it far from his reach at night.

'You're a loud sleeper,' his roommate said quietly.

'You heard?'

'Hard not to.'

Cullen winced, even as he wondered what Samson had heard, exactly. 'Sorry.'

'What in the Fade happened to you, man?'

Cullen shook his head. 'I thought everyone in Kirkwall knew.'

'You mean about how you were trapped by demons in the Ferelden Circle?'

'Right.' He lay back down and pressed his face into the pillow.

'That's all anyone knows. The rest of it they make up.'

'What do they say?'

'You don't want to know.'

Cullen sighed. 'I don't know how long they kept me there. The Warden found me. Found the rest of the other templars, too. Men and women I had trained with. Boys and girls, barely. They were... just flesh, when she found them. They had me watch it all.'

He didn't say more.

'Sorry I asked,' Samson said.

'I'm not sure the dreams will ever go away,' Cullen said.

'You can worry about that another night,' Samson said. 'You just scream if you have to. Don't mind me.'

'Just punch me,' Cullen mumbled.

'Be a pleasure.'

*******

He let devotion carry him onward. He trained twice as hard as anyone else, spent the rest of his time either in the Chantry or studying history, political texts and reviews in the library.

There were few templars who cared about the Order, by the looks of it. Certainly Ser Alrik seemed to care about nothing but his own advancement. Perhaps the reason he had never been promoted, despite his age and apparent experience.

There was no Knight-Captain. Meredith Stannard hadn't named a replacement for the role in a half-year. Nobody knew what she was looking for. It must have eaten at Alrik and the other senior templars in the Gallows.

Cullen ignored the politics and the factions that seemed to bifurcate the Kirkwall Order, and focused on his own problems.

For the main, he succeeded. He controlled the desperate terror that had risen in him the first time he'd felt magic touch him after being freed in Kinloch. He was courteous to the mages under his care, if distant. He believed in Meredith's ideals, for Greagoir's had failed all the charges under his care, mages and templars both. 

He was promoted to Knight-Lieutenant a few months after his arrival. Some muttered and mumbled. Others nodded at the news. It was no secret that Cullen had no life outside the Order. When the others slipped away to trysts on the side, or the coined comforts of the Blooming Rose, they glanced at him and did not ask. As for what they thought, he, too, did not ask.

 

***

 

So Cullen's duties continued. One day he heard the news being cried through Kirkwall. The Warden had defeated the Archdemon.  _The_  Warden, the definite article. He knew, as soon as he heard her name, that she was as far from him as stars from the abyss. Did it hurt? Less than he might have thought. That life, not so far removed by time, seemed as though another man had lived it.

Meredith remarked on that, at one of his reviews. 

'An interesting rumour reached my ears,' she said.

He had been thinking of the Amell girl a fair amount, dreaming as he always did, and he prayed those thoughts were not apparent on his face.

'I hear you were acquainted with the Warden.'

Cullen winced inwardly, dread filling his heart, but maintained the mask he had started wearing since Ferelden, around the mages of the Circle. As distant as her, and whether he referred to the Warden or Meredith, he did not know.

'She was at Kinloch Hold when I was there,' he said.

'Yes,' Meredith said. 'That much was obvious. Rumour has it that you were infatuated with her.'

'I was young,' Cullen said.

Suddenly Meredith Stannard laughed, startling him so much a chill ran down his neck. 'Dear boy, you  _are_  young.' But the laugh vanished as soon as it had appeared.

'I trust you never acted on your desires,' she said, and her voice was cold.

'Never,' he said empathically, though he did that every night. What a fabulous liar he was turning out to be. 'She was under my care.'

The gap in conversation made him shift uneasily against the hard wooden back of his chair, under that cold, unwavering gaze.

'And I will never hear a similar rumour here, I understand.'

'No, Knight-Commander,' he said, bowing his head.

'We are their keepers,' Meredith said. 'There will be no fraternization. We are prisoners and jailers and guardians each. Never friends,  _never_ more.'

'Of course,' Cullen said.

'Dismissed,' Meredith said, and she bent her head to her work.

With an uneasy heart, feeling as though he had barely escaped the fire, Cullen made his way out, into the unsteady light.

 

*******

 

_Guard constantly against temptation. Be vigilant._

'This one sent magical supplies to an apostate,' the Knight-Commander said as she circled the cell. Against the wall, the mage sobbed, bruises a sickly purple.

Meredith stopped in front of him and looked down, her face a mask of contempt. 'And with what result? Six dead, innocent civillians, children. Three of our best templars wounded. One will perish before dawn.’ She glanced at Cullen. ‘ _You_ were lucky your arm could be saved.'

Barely healed, the burn on his lower arm still throbbed. How magic could destroy and yet restore. Two sides of a coin -- and yet these days it seemed weighted always to one side.

Most, if they were wise, took themselves willingly to the Circle, chose not to live a life running and hiding. Cullen had been sent to deal with enough renegade apostates that he had felt the searing agony of flame and the numbing of ice a hundred times over. Those were the ones who refused the Order's aid. Half of those had mutated into abominations before his eyes. No, they were not safe.

Meredith Stannard shook her head. The circlet on her brow glinted. 'This is mercy. He should be executed, but certain... factors... have begged for his life.'

He steeled his heart, and tried not to think of mercy. _It is for their own safety._ Better one should suffer than all the others. The Knight-Commander ruled with a firm hand. She had brought Cullen to see him, to let him know that his pain was for... for what? Stood for something?

 _We must be cruel to be kind._ Her words.

'I will not have the others follow his lead,' she said. 'We must protect them from sedition.' She nodded at the guard. 'Keep him isolated here until he learns the error of his ways.'

'But how will we know if he has?' Cullen found himself asking, despite his better instincts.

'Thirty days should be enough,' she said, and she left the cell, while Cullen stood there.

'This is the prescribed solution?' he asked the guard, who shrugged.

'Standard,' he said. 'Why? You think he should get more?'

'No,' said Cullen, appalled. 'Just...'

'We don't hit them _too_ hard,' the guard said. 'Just loud enough to serve as a warning.'

Cullen bent down and examined the man's face. Six front teeth missing. One for each of the dead. Was it fair? Was it just?

Would the Ferelden Circle have been saved, if Greagoir had been this strict? Would his brothers and sisters still live?

'There's no need to hit him again,' he said. 'I think they've heard enough.' They both knew he meant the other mages.

'Knight-Commander's orders, ser. If you have a problem with them, take it up with her.'

 

He reviewed the report again, sitting in the library. It all seemed in order. The man had known what he was supporting. An underground network of apostates who sought to make entry into the Gallows. He had stolen runes from the store, runes of destructive power, and the runes had made a ruin of the templar standing in front of Cullen. He could still feel the heat from the blast, torching his armour, blistering the skin of the arm he had thrown up to shield his face. He should have died, but for the body between him and the full force of the attack.

They talked about freedom and rescue, and then they turned into abominations and demons. Murderers. The thought made his heart cold. _No more. The histories say the Circle here has never broken._ The man was no innocent.

He lifted his quill, dipped it in ink, and signed the report.

 

***

 **KNIGHT-LIEUTENANT**  

The newest Knight-Lieutenant of Kirkwall sweated under his platemail. The order he had been given was troubling him. Blood mages in Darktown. He had vanquished enough blood mages that he knew he was more than capable. Hence his title.

At first he had doubted his own abilities, had had to fight down the old wave of panic that washed over him when he heard the term. Blood mage. How could anyone forget, if they had been through the madness of the Ferelden Circle? To see a mage possessed was a horrific thing. The life that had been wasted at the Tower. The lives they could have saved.

He could not pity them. Kirkwall was thick with them, with cults and demons and apostates. The Order had its hands full with those who were genuine threats. There were other apostates they unofficially allowed to roam, under watch. There was little choice. He had never heard of a Circle so large, nor so overcrowded. Starkhaven had sent all their mages to Kirkwall after their Circle had burned to the ground. The place was teeming with magic. There were hundreds of mages in the Gallows.

 _We need to expand_ , he often told Meredith. Soon they would be fitting three mages to a cell.

Always the answer was the same. _We don't have the funds. Nor the space._ The latter was true. There was nowhere else on the island. Kirkwall proper, then. But Meredith wanted the civilians kept safe from any potential  _issues_. Cullen didn't really see the difference between turning a blind eye to some and establishing a new base in the city. He knew better than to press the point.

Templar skills relied on faith and conviction, no matter the source of that conviction. Men like Alrik found strength in the force of their need to dominate. Cullen had only the will to prevent disaster from happening again. But his smites were stronger than they had ever been. Thrask had remarked on that, just the other day. He liked the man, but there were other things Thrask said that troubled him. Thrask dreamt of open gardens without locks, families mingling. Cullen had once shared that vision.

Thrask did not  _understand._ Maker forbid he would ever come to do so. Sometimes Cullen tried to tell him.  _I was like you once. I thought we should uncage them._

But all that was before, and he did not, absolutely not, ever think of the quick flash of a blue-lined robe, swirling around a lithe ankle. Ferelden had killed all the desire in him. Dreams were fear and pain. Not once had he sought his own relief in that long year. Not for him the frantic, furtive rubbings of his youth, hiding beneath his sheets while around him all the other young recruits did the same.

Not for him the salacious novels that the other templars passed around. He had his dreams, had his own personal demon, one who visited him every night.

Her, and duty.

 

He had written his name down on the board for the mission he was gearing up for, buckling on his greaves and booting up. Nobody else had written their name next to his, to no great surprise of his own or anyone else's. He had grown used to his solitary excursions.

Today he hunted an apostate in Lowtown, by the docks, a man suspected of smuggling lyrium to the underground.

Lowtown was a mess at the best of times, a complete dump at others. Tonight the rain pelted down with a fury.

He passed few others in the streets. The cobblestones were treacherous, overflowing with water, dark under the clouded night. He was paying attention to his footing, so much so that he almost didn't notice the girl and the dwarf standing by the stairs to the docks, watching him head down to the water.

'Well, that tip-off was useless. Another bonus gone,' the dwarf said to the girl, who shrugged good-humoredly. 'Don't get us into trouble this time.'

'Night's young,' she said. 'Evening,  _ser._ ' There was a lazy drawl to that last word. A glimpse of dark hair, a self-satisfied smile. He thought he recognised her face. There was no time to dwell further on it. Down the street, light ebbed from beneath a warehouse door.

A charge of blackpowder, blasting the door open after he took shelter. The stockroom was small, dingy, contained a solitary apostate and a whole bunch of spiders. Mages and spiders. Always mages and spiders.

One miserable smite and he had the man cowering in his knees, outlining the details of the operation. Desperation. Cullen smelled it all around, on the mage who trembled before him, on the vials of lyrium stuffed into small crates, on himself.

He dragged the man to his feet. 'Who else works here?'

'No-one,' the apostate babbled. 'It's just mine. I can't afford to share the profits.' Cullen sighed and hauled him along, making him help carry what there was left of the lyrium. Another body to fill the Circle, already bursting at the seams.

There was a dark figure by the open door, and Cullen cursed himself for not having noticed. No, the silhouette was unmistakeable when a gap in the clouds loosed the moonlight. Blond hair, a silver circlet. A very large sword.

'Knight-Commander?'

She pursed her lips and surveyed his handiwork. 'This is your doing?'

He nodded.

'You seem to spend a lot of time alone.'

He sighed, on the verge of mustering some explanation.

'Your peers don't care much for you, I see.'

'Not particularly,' he admitted. Why had she come here? He couldn't see her face.

'What if it had been more than one useless mage?' The man choked out a squawk of protest, but fell silent when the Knight-Commander turned her head to him. 

'I had reliable information,' he said. He had checked before leaving, with the Order's sources. He dared not admit he had been reckless, unafraid of death for all the wrong reasons.

'I saw your name on the board,' she said. 'Day after day, mission after mission. More than your roster demands. What are you hoping to prove?'

He was surprised. He heard it in his voice as he answered. 'Nothing,' he said, and it was true. 'My duty. To protect.'

Meredith studied him for a while. 'I trust you need no assistance getting this creature to the Circle,' she said.

'No, Knight-Commander.'

He barely made out the cursory nod she gave him as she turned on her heel and left. What business she had in Kirkwall at this hour, he didn't know. It was not his place to ask.

Instead he took his charge to the Gallows, led him to a cell, and fingering the lyrium as he turned it over to the vault, wondered which of them was truly free.

 

**KNIGHT-CAPTAIN**

 

He threw everything he had into his work, not least because he had nothing else and nobody else to look forward to. Grim determination had carried him through his unlikely acceptance into the Order. It was not that he was naturally good at anything aside from having the size and reach of a warrior. It was that he had worked for it, harder than anyone else in Kinloch, harder than anyone else in the Gallows.

He treated the mages fairly, impersonally, though he still woke in the middle of the night, drenched with sweat. Samson snored in his cot across the room, so used to the sounds of Cullen's nightmares that now he slept through them.

Once, waking in the night after the visions had been particularly lurid, Cullen had gone down to the alchemy lab and asked the Tranquil there for something, anything to stop the dreams. He had taken various sleeping draughts for months, tried every single potion in the stores, and when he had returned one final time, asking for a possibility, the woman had lifted a hand and pointed to the burning sun brand on her own forehead.

Fear had ruled him once. Fear had driven him to humiliation in front of the Warden herself. They said he had almost broken. They said he had been the only one not to break. Cullen knew otherwise. He was not whole. He was only playing out the motions, crafting himself into an automaton, the ideal templar, armoured in an empty shell.

 

***

 

 

Meredith Stannard called him to her office at the height of summer.

As he crossed the halls to meet her, he studied the apprentices as he went. As he so often did when he passed by their quarters, he thought of the Warden, in the days before the breaking of the Circle. But Kirkwall was not Kinloch Hold. The apprentices in Ferelden had laughed, bickered, played, had the spirit to chat with templars. In Kirkwall, they sat in silence mostly, occasionally whispering to each other, faces serious and drawn.

The Gallows functioned. Cullen would say that much.

He left the running of the Circle alone. First Enchanter Orsino didn't welcome intrusions into his domain, not even from the Knight-Commander herself.

A small voice behind him said, 'Please, ser,' and he turned. The newest member of the gallows stood before him, a tiny thing who looked so nervous his heart softened.

'Yes?'

'I'm new here. They told me to look for the First Enchanter.' She couldn't have been more than twelve at the most. For a child who had been recently displaced, she was doing an admirable job of holding herself together, despite her nerves.

'I'm walking that way,' he said. 'You can come with me.' He paused. 'Did nobody offer to bring you to him?'

She shook her head. Cullen shook his head and made a mental note to speak with Orsino about that. For a man who claimed to care greatly about his flock, he certainly never showed much sign of it.

'Are you frightened?' he asked, trying to make his voice gentle, less of the stern, dispassionate mask of command he had adopted over the last year.

'No,' she half-whispered. 'A little.'

'Don't be,' he said. 'The enchanters will take care of you. What's your name?'

'Ella,' she said, and she looked up at him with hope.

 

 

He wondered what Meredith wanted with him. Like everyone else in the Gallows, he was nervous whenever her summons came.

That day her door was open when he dropped the latest addition to the Circle off with the First Enchanter.

'A child,' she remarked, looking at the girl through the two doorways, as Orsino's door shut. 'Such a pity.'

He didn't quite know what to say, so he sat when she waved him at the seat.

'Have you ever had to kill a child, Knight-Lieutenant? An abomination?'

'Yes,' he admitted, his heart heavy as he said it. 'I did what I had to. It's a thankless task.' No words could describe the horror of it.

'I see,' was all the Knight-Commander said. 'You've been doing well,' she remarked, segue macabre. 'I've heard good things about you.'

Cullen found that hard to believe. Perhaps from Sers Thrask and Emeric. He couldn't think of anyone else who'd have put in a good word for him.

He said nothing of the sort.

'Your views seem oddly sensible,' Meredith noted.

Always Meredith's tone made him guarded, unsure as to what he should be answering. Fortunately, she didn't usually seem to care what he had to say. He let her continue.

'I have been looking for someone to fill the position of Knight-Captain for a while,' she remarked.

He had been mulling over his choice of candidates. He thought he would choose Ser Thrask when asked. The man's heart was in the right place.

'I assume,' the Knight-Commander said, 'if I ask you to accept the position, your answer will be yes.'

He thought he had misheard her. Never had he thought he would be considered at all. He was, as she had said, very young, barely past his twentieth year. He had hardly made a mark in Kirkwall.

'Me?' he asked, stupidly, his tongue thick in his mouth.

'I have been watching you,' she said. 'Just as I watched the rest of the Gallows and found them wanting.'

'But I'm...'

'Young?' she finished for him. 'Naive? Headstrong?'

Headstrong. He had never considered that quality in himself before.

'All those things,' she said. 'But that is what we need. I need a Knight-Captain who understands that mages are our sworn charges, but not our friends. Never our friends. We protect, Cullen. We serve.'

How many times had he repeated those words to himself?

'But there are many who are more experienced,' he said. 'Stronger.' 

 _More feared,_  he thought, and he was thinking of Ser Alrik, who practically ran half the Gallows with his lackeys.

'I need the Circle to be stable,' Meredith said. 'We must guard this fragile balance, Cullen. Whom would you give this title to? Alrik? Thrask? The first would have all the mages up in arms. The second would have them all do as they please. Both would turn the Circle and Kirkwall into a mass of abominations.'

'And I?' He couldn't help it. He wanted to know what she could possibly see in him.

Meredith put her hand flat on the desk. 'That remains to be seen,' she said. 'I  _expect_  you to understand, when right seems wrong and wrong seems right. Remember Kinloch.'

He could never forget.

Knight-Captain. In Ferelden it would have taken him years to even come close to being considered for the position.

Did she see something in him? Was he just another tool to be molded into shape? He could hardly tell.

'I have faith in your capabilities, Knight-Captain,' she said. 'Do not let me down.'

He bowed to her. The responsibility, like a millstone around his neck, troubled him, and yet a spark of pride stirred within him. Let this be his redemption. He would not let the Order down.

As the sun dipped below the water, he stepped into his new chambers. They were a far cry from his first room at the Gallows, larger, spacious even, not far from his office. Nothing luxurious, but he had never known better. Alone in his room, no-one left to hear his cries in the night, he slept, and dreamt. And remembered.

 

 

 

 

***

**GALLOWS SUMMER**

 

Late in summer, disaster visited.

Cullen had been out at morning prayers in the Chantry, a source of refuge from the frosty hostility that seemed to surround him in the Gallows, and when he took the ferry from Kirkwall back across the water, there was a commotion carrying on in the courtyard.

'It's your old roommate,' Ser Thrask said, not unkindly.

'He was found carrying love letters to Kirkwall for a mage,' Ser Alrik snorted. 'Bloody fool. Deserves what he gets. Heard him snivelling in his quarters.'

Cullen, who had become adept at ignoring Ser Alrik over the past year, shot him a vicious look and made his way to the room he had once shared with Samson. A year ago. It seemed longer. Nobody had filled his old bunk. As the mages grew in number, the templar order shrank, and those who were left grew more harried and worn by the day.

Samson sat at the foot of his bed, packing his things. Like Cullen, he owned barely anything aside from the bare essentials and some trinkets, their provenance of which Cullen had always had his private suspicions.

'Samson,' he said, aggrieved.

'Did you tell Meredith?' The voice was ripe with accusation.

'No,' Cullen said, aghast. He followed rules, and yet it had seemed unreal to condemn either of them for sending a simple love letter. Cullen  _had_  known. He had seen Samson take the letters, had said nothing.

'You did nothing,' Samson said in a low voice, ragged with hate. 'I saved you. I told Alrik to stop. Meredith has already invoked the Rite of Tranquility.'

'You knew the rules,' Cullen protested. 'You knew the danger. You should have told Maddox to stop, to keep him safe.'

Samson whirled on him. 'Safe,' he spat. 'Safe is an easy word for you to whine.'

'Samson...'

'To think I felt sorry for you once.'

'I didn't know about Maddox,' Cullen said.

'You're the Knight-Captain,' Samson said, bitterness rising in his voice. 'Bark at Meredith's heels forever, then.'

'I swear, I...'

Samson lifted his pack and strode out, pushing past Cullen.

As he went, Cullen called out to him. ‘What will you do without lyrium?’

‘What,’ snarled the disgraced templar, ‘could you possibly care?’ And he left Cullen standing there.

 

***

 

Sometimes he saw Maddox around the Gallows. Like all the Tranquil, he unnerved Cullen.  _Surely there is a better way_ , he thought. He watched the mage move with unfailing calm about his duties. Once, he went to Maddox in his new atelier.

'Do you still speak with Ser Samson?' the mage asked, still in that eerie, emotionless tone.

'No,' Cullen said. It was true, but not the whole truth. He made sure Samson had food, and watched over him from afar as he went through lyrium withdrawal. He left tiny phials of his own lyrium in the cracks by Samson's spot by the docks, when Kirkwall slept, to tide Samson through the worst of his symptoms.

It was not something he needed anyone in the Gallows to know. If Meredith had found out, it would have been his title, or his head swinging from the Gallows. Was he over-exaggerating? He didn't know. He did it anyway.

Maddox was looking at him still, his face smooth and calm.

'Can I help you, Knight-Captain?'

'No,' Cullen said, and left.

 

 

'Cullen,' the Knight-Commander said, when he next visited her office. 'Yes?'

'I just wanted to ask about Maddox,' Cullen said, uncertain. 'That... I don't... Was it necessary? Samson said they were just love letters.'

'Ah,' Meredith said. She steepled her hands on the table and looked at him. 'First love letters. Then others. Then the fomenting of rebellion, secret notes passed back and forth, secret codes hidden in other innocuous notes. I have seen the city in turmoil, Cullen. I have seen the streets run red with blood. I will not see it that way again.'

He should have been with her on that point. A year ago he would have agreed wholeheartedly. But time passed, and he was no longer that boy, angry, bitter, bereaved.

Love letters. The streets running red. The jump seemed absurd.  _Keep your mouth shut and do your duty._

'But,' he said, before he could help it. 'Why not give him a warning?'

'I did,' Meredith said, irritably. Samson had not mentioned that point.

'I had him locked in his cell for a month. I thought that was a reasonable way to impress the matter upon him.'

She regarded Cullen for a moment. 'The safety of the Circle and our wards is entirely dependent upon us, Cullen. It is not just for our sake that we have to enforce these sanctions. We picked up the pieces of the Starkhaven Circle after it burned to the ground. We have more mages than any other Circle in the Marches. How easy do you think it would be for the Circle to flout their chains if they were incited to do so? You know how understaffed the Order is here, how few new recruits make it through training, how ever fewer join year by year. You already know how little regard the citizens of Kirkwall have for mages  _and_  templars both.'

That was true. Kirkwall was full of unease. Every faction in the city seemed to hate every other faction. Even the city guard, traditionally aligned with the Order, was mistrustful of the templars.

He wanted to change that. He spoke of his hopes for the Order to his Knight-Commander in their monthly reviews, and she nodded, and studied him with eyes that seemed to see through his skin.

'I would make this city safe harbour for all,' she said, and with the light from her window making a halo of her hair, Cullen thought he believed.

It was only later that he thought about the Ferelden refugees huddled outside the Gallows, denied entry by Meredith herself. She had explained it so easily. They had to be vetted for the safety of the Kirkwallers. Cullen didn't think any of them looked remotely like they could do anything to anyone in Kirkwall, wasted and desperate as they were. He made sure none were starving. It was the least he could do. And he noted, as he took stock of the refugees in their canvas shelters, that the dark-haired girl was no longer there.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cullen and mageHawke are pretty much the definition of diametrically opposing forces, which is a) part of the reason this fic took a year to write b) a horrifyingly magnificent source of conflict that I'm not sure I managed to pull off completely. In fact, this would probably have been done in a month if I had stuck to my original cop-out plan of writing Hawke as a rogue.
> 
> The problem with DA2's plot, though I love DA2 in general, is that they had 1 year of devtime and the plot thereby ended up being a bit of a (complete) clusterfuck.
> 
> Obviously, the point they were trying to make is that one has to pick a side (they're all awful, if you ask me...), but thanks to doing stuff like letting level design leave in audio eggs that just sound like constant beatings from the Gallows, blood mages showing up in the hundreds... yeah. It was a one-year project with horrendously complicated subject matter to tackle and balance. The only way to weave your way through the game is to come up with some major plot handwaving no matter which side you choose.
> 
> Therefore I chose to adapt the cloth of Thedas with the idea that neither side is better than the other, that Hawke chooses what she does for personal reasons and beliefs, for the people she loves, and that Templars, particularly Knight-Captain Cullen of Kirkwall, were regularly forced to attend balls.
> 
> And so, please forgive any slightly non-canon moments. This is an attempt at reconciling the rather odd path of making mageHawke sympathize with the templars, and if it takes some Cullen-is-a-repressed-headcase sexual tension/Knight-Captain banging to resolve that then so be it. You were warned :)
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Footnote: The Gallows comes off as pretty terrible in the game especially if you don't play the Templar path. I assume the writers didn't intend to portray the Order in its entirety as a bunch of insane rapists since you get this letter from Ella if she goes to the Circle:
> 
> Messere Hawke,
> 
> In case you don't remember me, we met in the Gallows a few years ago. You saved my life. Twice, in fact. Once from Ser Alrik, and once from... someone else.
> 
> It's not the kindest thing to say, but nobody misses Alrik. Not even the other templars. I know it's hard to imagine, but they don't want to fight. They want things to be normal: no Harrowings, no Tranquil, and no one dying. But none of us are getting that wish now.
> 
>  
> 
> Also, there's a letter from Bethany reinforcing that viewpoint, which I won't paste here as this text is long enough already. I suppose the Gallows is comparable to modern-day military service or broken prisons where inexcusable offences do happen and reform is needed, but happening in a time where the veil is thin in the city and Hawke is singlehandedly-downing a billion blood mages and demons. And, you know, the First Enchanter is researching blood magic.
> 
> tl;dr -- I like all perspectives, whether they support mages or Templars (okay, not Alrik...)
> 
> Comments and kudos most appreciated :)


	2. hush, say nothing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The young Knight-Captain of Kirkwall has a headache, and encounters the woman who will prove an even larger headache.
> 
>  
> 
> ‘This is Enchanter Hawke,’ the dwarf standing next to the young woman said. ‘Of the Ferelden Circle.’
> 
> The Knight-Captain regarded him with narrowed eyes. ‘No,’ he said in clipped Ferelden tones, ‘she isn’t.’
> 
> ‘Well done,’ the white-haired elf standing at the back said to the dwarf, who shrugged.
> 
> Hawke was not a force to be deterred. ‘So, as I was saying. I think you owe me your life. Besides, don’t you have some… problems you need help with? I get places, you know. I get everywhere, really. Like a cockroach. A templar-rescuing cockroach.'

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hawke's magic is suspiciously Knight-Enchanterish because I found that class really fun to play as in DA:I, and ... I'm sorry. :)

‘Hush, it’s the Knight-Captain. Say nothing.’

Knight-Captain Cullen heard the usual whispers as he paced up and down the Gallows, nursing the headache that had developed very abruptly that morning. As of late, headaches were a given any time he met with Knight-Commander Meredith.

Mages. Blood mages. Maleficarum, roaming the ratways of Lowtown. Brazenly lurking about the Wounded Coast. To compound upon these problems, Meredith's attitudes, always strict, had become harsher. She had mentioned the Right of Annulment in their morning meeting. Even as a joke, it had been in poor taste. A little too far for Cullen, and too close to his own past for comfort.

Add to that reports of some vigilante named Hawke, who'd apparently been killing blood mages on the side -- amongst other things -- and Cullen's headache doubled in intensity. Mind you, not that killing blood mages was a terrible thing, but who knew the circumstances? The system existed for a reason.

Today’s headache was brutal.

Vanishing recruits. Keran and Wilmod, two of his most promising trainees. Wilmod had been especially suspect, breezing in and out of the Gallows, missing training sessions. Even Thrask, that most gentle of templars, had been so frustrated he’d muttered something about stripping Wilmod of his lyrium supply for a week.

Meredith had been piling all manner of responsibilities onto Cullen’s plate. She was always in her office now, reading, barely looking up from her desk, her Tranquil attendant scribbling furious translations from an enormous stack of obscure old scrolls and tomes. She did not tell Cullen what she sought so urgently. Instead she patted him on the back and told him to keep up the good work.

He was younger than most of his subordinates. Thrask, Emeric, Alrik. He grimaced at the thought of Alrik. That man had nothing but sneers for Cullen, and told him little. He was always surrounded by his cronies, hovering constantly at the threshold of insubordination. Just enough to needle Cullen. At least Thrask and Emeric didn’t seem to begrudge him his odd promotion.

Meredith said she had promoted him for his efforts, despite the nagging feeling that he could never do enough. Everyone in the Circle knew of his past, heard how he’d been despatched to Kirkwall out of shame, not glory.

The only person in Kirkwall who had faith in Cullen was Meredith, and he was rapidly beginning to realise it was for all the reasons that shamed him the most.

‘Knight-Captain! Wilmod’s back, Ser. But... He ran off again after grabbing his things. I couldn’t stop him. Said he was going to the Wounded Coast to clear his head.’ The recruit flinched nervously at the sour expression that possessed the Knight-Captain’s face.

‘I’ll deal with him personally,’ Cullen said, gathering his equipment. ‘Stay here and keep an eye out for Keran. And by the Maker, nobody else is to leave the Gallows until I return.’

***

That was how he ended up on the Wounded Coast, yelling at Wilmod, finally resorting to violence.

‘Ooh! Right to the balls,’ a light female voice said. ‘And I thought templars were supposed to beat up on mages, not other templars. Good to see you’re diversifying.’

Maker’s breath, that was the last straw. Terrifying bosses, insubordinate subordinates, abominable recruits, him having to pull his sword on Wilmod – Cullen snapped back at the young woman who’d appeared at the mouth of the makeshift camp.

She was holding a staff, which didn’t help matters.

He didn’t get much out of his mouth before Wilmod shuddered. The recruit’s mouth opened. His skin darkened like a husk and split apart. Nightmares poured out of him and around him.

Literally, abominable recruits. In his own Order. Stupid. He shouldn’t have gone alone.

Cullen yelled wordlessly and went for what had once been Wilmod and was now no longer recognisable, a mass of torn skin and flesh. He aimed for a limb, cut at it, but another shade came slicing at him from behind, and he barely blocked with his shield.

Something blurred past him. It was the young woman who had been poking her nose in. Maker, she was fast. She had her staff out, blue energy flaring from the tip.

‘Bzzzzzt!’ said the girl. Right before Cullen's eyes, she reached out her staff and stuck it in front of the abomination that had been about to strike him from behind.

Lightning shot from the tip of her staff and flung the mass of flailing, twisted flesh backward. All in the space of a heartbeat.

‘You owe me for that, templar!’ she said as she went past him.

The Wilmod-thing screamed, inhuman overtones burning in Cullen’s ears, and it backed away as she pulled a blade blazing with energy from the very air itself.

His jaw dropped.

He had never seen anything like the blade she had summoned. A mage, an apostate, one who darted in and out of the field like a drunken firefly. He had never seen a mage with such raw confidence.

There was something very familiar about her, not only in the way she looked, but in the power she was radiating. Cullen couldn’t place it. He had felt the pulse of her magic before, but where?

He wasted no time gawking at the sudden quarter she had given him, and brought his sword cleaving down upon another shade that flanked him.

He turned back to her, only to see the Wilmod-thing split apart under her strange blade.

'And that,' she added.

Cullen almost smote her out of habit, but stayed his hand. Demons and abominations still flowed over the campsite. Whoever this girl was, she was one of the most powerful mages he had ever come across, and he found it hard to concentrate on the battle, constantly set on edge by her raw power. She wielded her staff and her odd blade in metered doses, always waiting for the exact moment when an enemy’s guard was up, never rushing in blindly, never over-extending.

Grudgingly, Cullen realised he was impressed.

It was over faster than he had expected. How many abominations had they defeated? Rage demons... Two that he’d slashed and cut. He would have been slaughtered if not for her.

Cullen almost resented her for saving his hide. Add the glowering elf who was staring daggers at him, the dwarf who was grinning far too much for his liking, and, of all people, the newly appointed Guard-Captain Aveline.

‘Who are you?’ he asked the apostate.

When the girl said her name, he blinked. So this was Hawke. For someone who had purportedly blazed up through the ranks of the city's underworld, she looked rather young.

Now he remembered where he'd seen her before. The dark-haired girl he had seen arguing with the guardsman in the Gallows, a lifetime ago. He had seen her flitting past from time to time, mostly from afar. She had a wicked, self-assured smile and a light look to her face. The way she moved in battle, sleek and smooth and deadly—

He realised he was staring like an idiot.

‘This is Enchanter Hawke,’ the dwarf standing next to the young woman said. ‘Of the Ferelden Circle.’

The Knight-Captain regarded him with narrowed eyes. ‘No,’ he said in clipped Ferelden tones, ‘she isn’t.’

‘Well done,’ the white-haired elf standing at the back said to the dwarf, who shrugged.

‘I was just joking,’ he said, spreading his hands in the air. 'It'll work someday. I'll find a templar stupid enough.'

Cullen didn’t quite know where to start. 'You--'

The girl called Hawke cleared her throat impatiently. ‘Is there a problem, templar?’

She was twirling her staff like a baton in front of him, flaunting it. She wasn’t even pretending to hide it. Although, with what he’d just seen, it no longer mattered.

He knew how to bring down a mage efficiently and cleanly. He was good at his duties. He also knew his limits.

Even if he smote her, she would be on him in a second. She could have bested Irving, or Orsino, or any of the First Enchanters he’d ever known. He didn’t know how many templars he would have needed to take her in. There was only one other mage he had ever met who could rival her power, and he certainly didn’t want to think about  _her_  right now.

And, of course, she was far from alone.

This was a losing battle. He had to say something. He had to do something. Of course, that something was fairly stupid.

‘You’re an apostate,’ he said, the words rushing past his lips. Even though they had fought back-to-back, the old knot of fear rose within him. He quenched it with duty. ‘I have to bring you to the Circle…’

Hawke stared at him for a moment, and then she burst out laughing. Finally, after far too long, she took a breath and found her words. ‘I just saved your sorry ass! What are you going to do, throw me in there? After I saved your life and all?’

Suddenly the staff was in the ground, planted, and she was reaching through the air to draw a blade that was made of pulsing energy. Cullen drew a breath and started channeling the last of his lyrium reserves.

_Congratulations, Knight-Captain, on choosing the stupidest and most pointless death of all time._

But duty called.

‘Hawke, that’s the Knight-Captain,’ Aveline Vallen told her.

‘So?’

‘So, stop it.’

‘I saved him. I'll un-save him if I want.’

‘Hawke.’

The apostate sighed. She brought her hands down, and the blade folded back into itself and vanished. She eyed him up and down, her scrutiny making him shift awkwardly from foot to foot. Her demeanour changed, and she began to smile at him.

‘How about a trade? I scratch your back, you scratch mine.’

‘You need to come with me,’ Cullen tried again, aware that he had lost control of the situation. If he'd ever had any.

She started to laugh again. ‘That’s really funny. I’d like to see you try. Do you know how many templars I’ve…’

There was some movement behind her. Hawke stumbled forward a little, and turned to glare at her friends.

‘Say that again?’ he asked.

‘I’ve made friends with,’ she finished, without any change in tone. ‘We get along so well. Love my templar friends. Ser Thrask, lovely fellow! Besides, I don’t think it’ll go well for you if you get all smitey mighty.’

‘Good grief,’ the Guard-Captain muttered. ‘Varric, can’t you stop her from talking?’

‘Go ahead,’ the dwarf said, lifting his hands expansively. ‘Be my guest.’

Hawke was not a force to be deterred. ‘So, as I was saying. I think you owe me your life. Besides, don’t you have some… problems you need help with? I get places, you know. I get everywhere, really. Like a cockroach. A templar-rescuing cockroach.'

‘Er...’ He was out of his depth with her. Out of his depth with all of Kirkwall, really. If she wanted him dead he wouldn’t even be having this conversation with her. Besides, she’d been killing abominations. Helping out the Order. He put his hand to his head and rubbed his temple.

‘Alright,’ he said, half-unable to believe he was saying the words. ‘In that case, there’s a small matter that… I… might have been having trouble with.’

Hawke listened intently, silent at the prospect of business.

He admitted he’d been trying to figure out what was happening to his recruits, who had last been seen at the Blooming Rose, where nobody would speak to him.

Hawke grinned when he tripped over the phrase  _young ladies_ , to his humiliation. She grinned even more when he said  _brothel_. She grinned so wide he hoped her head would fall off when he said he had been unable to get anywhere with the... employees.

From the back, he heard the dwarf say, 'Even hookers won't talk to him.'

Fine. ‘Perhaps  _you_  could talk to them,’ he said.

'You wouldn’t believe what you can learn from pillow talk,’ Hawke said, which made him shift uncomfortably. He didn’t have time for this. He had a lot of… work to do.

He stumbled through the rest of their conversation, wondering if he would regret their business arrangement, already dreading what the Knight-Commander might say.

Aside from Hawke possibly being right about him not being able to bring her in without a small army of templars, she reminded him of Solona Amell, and the thought that if she had remained warded in the Circle, he would be dead, and possibly all of Ferelden with him. Now the same debt, to a different mage.

Once he had believed magic was something blessed, something to be revered and pruned into beauty, for good. He could almost feel the old stones in the Chantry digging into his knees. Once, before joy had fled, he had prayed, begged to join the Order, longed to be found worthy, chased a dream.

He wavered under the onslaught of her beaming face, and the dwarf's impatient grumbles.

‘If you could look into the matter, I’d appreciate it. You can... You can come and give me your report in the Gallows.’ It sounded professional enough.

‘Better not be a trap,’ Hawke said. ‘I’ll see you soon, Knight-Captain. Nice hair, by the way. I’ve never seen anything like it.’ She actually winked at him as she turned to go.

Cullen was left standing there, rubbing his neck, staring down at the mess Wilmod had left of his armour, wondering how he was going to drag all that gorestained plate back to the Gallows.

‘A word?’ Aveline tapped him on the shoulder. She had hung back while the others wandered off, seemingly blithe, laughing and chatting. As though the Wounded Coast wasn’t full of bandits, darkspawn and abominations. Mind you, he was the idiot who’d ventured out there on his own.

‘Guard-Captain.’ He respected her, had dealt with her a few times. He found her honourable and reliable, traits that were hard to come by in Kirkwall.

She nodded at him. ‘I understand your feelings on the matter, but Hawke does a lot more good for this city than it might appear. We’ve purged countless abominations and shades. Demons. She could do a lot to help you. Be your eyes, go where you can’t... that sort of thing.’

‘Yes, I agreed to her suggestion,’ Cullen said.

‘Right,’ Aveline said. ‘I was just making sure you were planning to uphold your end of the bargain when she gets to your office.’

‘I gave my word,’ Cullen said, aggrieved.

She shot him a baleful stare. ‘If anything untoward happens, Knight-Captain, you’ll have to answer to me.’

‘I said I…’ She was already off, catching up with Hawke and the rest of them.

Maker, nobody in the city trusted him. He had given the apostate his word, and though nobody else seemed to think so, that still meant something to him. He had enough sway with the Knight-Commander that she would allow this...  _Hawke_  to assist the Order under his watch. Under his responsibility. At his expense, if anything should go wrong.

From up the path, he could hear Hawke telling a story about a templar she had once known. It wasn’t flattering. Her voice cut through the wind of the Coast.

He clenched his fists and bent to gather what remained of Wilmod, dark stains and broken armour on a bloodied shore.


	3. gallows humour

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Hawke's first Gallows meeting with Cullen proves disastrous.

Late in the afternoon, there was a rap on Cullen's door, and Hawke sauntered in. An apostate, walking into the Gallows as though she owned it. He couldn’t believe her gall. He wondered how many people had seen her enter his office, and gave Meredith’s office a worried glance. He had filed his report about the incident and received his directives, but still... One never knew what might set off the Knight-Commander these days. Her door was shut. He breathed out a little.

‘Knight-Captain!’ she said. ‘Such a surprise to see you here. Do you come here often too?’

He stared at her, at a loss for words. The only people who came to talk to him voluntarily were Thrask and Emeric, and even with them there was always a barrier due to his rank. Social niceties were quite out of his depth.

She appropriated the chair on the other side of his desk, leaning forward and propping her chin on one hand, her face coming dangerously near. Cullen cleared his throat and shifted further back in his chair.

‘I’ve got some information for you. Though you might not like it.’ Her eyes were a rather spectacular shade of blue. He kept his gaze as far away from them as possible.

‘Serah Hawke,’ he said, finally regaining his manners. ‘Please. Tell me what you know.’

She’d made good on her word. It surprised him. So many things in Kirkwall were rank, rotten beneath a thin veneer of gilt.

Desire demons. That rang far too close for comfort. In the middle of Kirkwall. In the brothel, of course. Infiltrating the ranks. As though the Order didn’t have enough problems. Not to mention his own. Watching those he trusted warp their wefts into something  _other_ , an old agony he knew all too well. _There but for the grace of the Maker go I._

Cullen felt his chest tighten, forced himself to keep drawing slow breaths. The presence of someone else in the room, aggravating or not, made it easier to make himself push the panic aside.

He shook his head. ‘You mentioned blood mages in Darktown?’

‘A whole pocket of them,’ Hawke said. ‘I killed… one, two, three... a _shitload_. Want me to bring you the bodies next time?’

‘What? Um, no, that’s not necessary.’

‘I did bring something for you, though. Don’t look so nervous, it’s alive. At least, I think that’s better.’

‘What is it?’

‘I left it outside in the courtyard with its sister.’

‘Keran?’ Cullen got up from his desk, gave Hawke an exasperated look and strode out into the courtyard. It was boiling up in him, the urge to just start yelling at everyone in the goddamned Gallows and all of Kirkwall, come to think of it.

Hawke tagged along after him. He could see her out of the corner of his eye, though he ignored her, or tried to.

‘You’re not going to hit him, are you?’

‘No. Well, not yet.’

She laughed. He resented her utter lack of decorum. There were rules, and she was breaking them, and completely messing up his regimented, orderly day, and...

Ignorant of his inner turmoil, Hawke added, ‘I found him in a cage, you know. Some kind of… unpleasant blood magic spirit prison thing.’

At that, Cullen turned to look at her. ‘They were… torturing him?’

‘Yes,’ she said. ‘And he didn’t break. So you might want to go a little easy on him and maybe not punch him senseless like you did the other one. I thought that turned out really well.’

‘I didn’t… never mind,’ he sighed. ‘I appreciate your input.’

The image of Samson, cast out and grasping for scraps along the docks, haunted him. He let Keran keep his commission, with Hawke as witness to his stability. The boy’s sister almost fell to her knees in gratitude.

He wasn't breaking the rules. Just bending them a little.

‘I’m so glad you offered to pay me on her behalf when you did,’ Hawke said. ‘I was  _just_  about to tell her not to worry about it.’

‘I would have paid you anyway,’ Cullen said, as she followed him back to his office for her reward.

‘Oh? That’s very thoughtful.’

‘It’s how it should be,’ he said. ‘I really do appreciate your help bringing Keran back. He is… a good man.’

‘Hey, Knight-Captain,’ she said, leaning against his desk as he unlocked one of his drawers.

He looked up at her.

‘Why does everyone think you’re an asshole?’

He muttered something under his breath. ‘Who says that? Never mind.’

‘I did say  _everyone_ ,’ Hawke clarified. ‘So?’

She picked up one of the pieces on the chessboard he had on the corner of his desk and spun the little knight around like a top. The clatter when it fell over made his head throb. He needed the lyrium dose waiting in his top drawer.

‘Hawke, where are you going with this?’

‘Well,’ she said, leaning forward a little more, losing interest in the chesspiece and replacing it in entirely the wrong place, ‘you were a little grouchy when I met you on the Coast, but you don’t really seem like Kirkwall’s biggest prick. I mean, there are other templars who are a little bit worse.’

He chose to ignore that. He moved the knight back to its square, fussed with the drawer again and brought out a pouch, dropping it into her proffered hand. ‘I hope this is enough silver for your time.’

‘It’s a start,’ she said. She weighed the bag in her hand before slipping it into a pocket.

'I should really get back to work,’ he said, waving a hand vaguely at the paper that crowded his desk, avoiding her gaze.

‘I suppose I should too,’ Hawke said, not one to be outdone, while he overthought everything as always. ‘So many blood mages to kill.’

He almost smiled, and then remembered what he was supposed to tell her. The thought made him groan inwardly.

'I have a, well, a proposition for you.'

Hawke blinked. 'What? I thought you weren't one of  _those_  templars.'

'What templars are you talking about?' Cullen frowned.

'Oh, nothing.'

'Hawke, the Knight-Commander has taken notice of you. I've spoken with her. She's agreed to let you roam out of the Circle on one condition.'

'Tell her I'm not going to sleep with her.'

The very idea of even suggesting such a thing to the Knight-Commander made him shiver. An image of Meredith’s thin-lipped, unamused face popped into his mind. Cullen tried not to lose his momentum. 'She, ah, suggested that you present a weekly report to the Gallows. Er, to me.'

'You want me to write a report? Me? A report?'

'You don't have to wr...'

'The blood will get all over it, you know. It's hard to take notes when you're severing blood mage limbs.'

'Hawke,' Cullen said after a pause, 'that's unpleasant. In any case, I think we can dispense with the formalities. A verbal review will suffice.'

She glared at him and folded her arms over her chest.

'Even you can't stop fifty templars,' he pointed out. He had been trying to make a joke. It hadn’t come out right at all.

'I'll give it my best. You can count how many you lose,' Hawke said, a real edge to her voice, and Cullen didn't think for one second that she was joking. He tried a different tack, trying to soothe her anger.

'Perhaps it would help if you thought of it as a, a social call? Or a... conversation.' He didn't know why his voice was suddenly unsteady, and hoped she hadn't noticed.

'Are you asking me on a date, Knight-Captain?' Hawke asked. Her jaw relaxed a little. There was a quirk of amusement in her eyes.

'No!' he said, perhaps a little too hastily. 'Absolutely not. It's strictly business,' he said, recovering his composure. 'I owe you my life, I know. But there are certain standards that have to be set for all the other mages here. The balance is delicate.'

'Such a pretty, privileged prisoner,' Hawke said imperiously, lifting her chin in the air and staring down her nose at him.

'Actually,' Cullen said, 'you're not at all a prisoner.'

'Any other caveats, Cullen?' She switched to his name effortlessly.

'If you could be... a little bit more discreet, perhaps. With the staff.'

'I need it,' she said. ‘I can’t walk without it. Rickets, and all.’

'No, you don't,' Cullen said, when he realised she was just being difficult. 'I saw you on the Coast. You don't even seem to need it at all.'

'Why should I comply with your stupid rules?' She tipped her chin at him again. Her eyes travelled over him, as though they stripped him bare. They lingered, but not on his face.

'The Order knows you have a sister,' Cullen said uncomfortably, shifting in his hard chair.

She almost stood, hands pressed down on his table, leaning over. 'Leave my sister out of this,  _Knight-Captain_.' The skin over her knuckles was pulled tight. There was nothing playful about her left, only narrowed eyes and curled lips taut over hard teeth.

He put his hands up in an attempt to placate her. 'Hawke, nothing will happen to her if you comply with Meredith's requests. She hardly asks for anything. I had her word that she would let your family live in peace. This is remarkable leniency from the Knight-Commander.'

'Did  _you_  tell her about Bethany?'

'Of course,' Cullen said, surprised. 'It's my duty, Hawke. You've both been less than subtle.'

'You...'

'Hawke, I'm a templar. I can't just ignore your situation because I'm indebted to you.'

'Horseshit,' she told him. 'You could, if you had the balls. Anything else you want to tell me? Make my day?'

'Actually,' he said, wincing, 'there's the matter of your phylactery.'

'Don't have one.' She stood up and folded her arms over her chest.

'I guessed as much,' he said. 'It's regulation, Hawke. Particularly given your circumstances.'

'I'm not--'

'You can find the phylactery room out and to your left,' he said, sighing as he said it. 'Unless you need me to personally escort you there.'

'Fuck you, Knight-Captain.' Hawke smacked her hand down on his desk. The chesspieces jumped and fell on their sides.

That made him press his lips together. The knot between his brows tightened. 'Hawke. If you want to play it this way, I'll see you next week at this hour, on this day, or you'll see what happens when you refuse to bend an inch.'

'You really are an asshole, Knight-Captain. I'll  _see_  you next Tuesday.' She stormed out of his office, slamming the door shut behind her, sending a new blast of pain through his aching head.

He could hear her as she went. ' _...asshole..._ no good deed goes unpunished... should have pushed him off the cliff myself...'

Cullen buried his head in his hands, and dreaded the next week.

 

**HAWKE**

 

Hawke stalked home, clenching her hand around the pinprick in her thumb. The Tranquil in the phylactery room had taken a single drop, yet it was infinitely more than that. A drop from her blood, a silver chain to track her. What stung most was that she had let them, without a fight, holding her vein out despite her bluster and fury, only a name keeping her anger in check. Bethany. Bethany. _Bethany._

Damn the young Knight-Captain. Damn her for saving him.

'So,' Varric said when she sauntered into the Hanged Man later, face like a fumarole, griping. 'You're over your little thing with the Knight-Captain?'

Hawke shrugged. 'You were right,' she said. 'He's an ass.'

‘What?’ Fenris asked. ‘The… baby templar?’

Varric snorted.

‘No idea what you’re talking about,’ Hawke said.

‘I can’t believe the Knight-Captain asked you to go to the brothel. On his behalf. Did you just take that job because he’s  _pretty_?’ Varric asked.

‘Look at you, talking like we can afford to turn down money.’

‘Everyone says he’s the biggest dick in Kirkwall. Templars are dicks, and he’s the biggest one. Aside from his boss, of course. Do I need to say it again? Did you know his facial hair is trimmed into glyphs? One says  _ass_ , the other says  _hole_.’

‘I’m offended,’ Hawke said. ‘I thought everyone says  _I’m_  the biggest dick in Kirkwall.’

‘I’ve talked to him a couple of times,’ Aveline remarked. ‘He’s young. Bit of a keener. But he seems to want to do the right thing.’

‘Seriously? Why’s everyone say he’s an asshole, then?’ Varric looked sceptical. 'Do you know how much of an asshole you have to be for the girls at the Blooming Rose not to talk to you?'

‘I don’t know, they say the same thing about me.’ Aveline shrugged.

‘It’s a good thing Isabela isn’t here,’ Hawke noted, ‘or you’d never hear the end of that.’

‘That’s why I’m saying it now, Hawke. What happened?'

'Bethany,' Hawke said, not wanting to mention the humiliation of the phylactery. That could wait. She shook her head, spat. 'It's my fault. I called too much attention to our doings.'

'They're watching her?'

She inclined her head. 'She stays free as long as I do what they want, I gather.' _What he wants._

Varric groaned. 'What an asshole. Like I said, Hawke. So what now? Are they going to even pay you?'

‘Yeah,’ Hawke said, tossing him the bag of coin. ‘That’s the only good part of this whole stinking mess. I should just have pushed him off the blighted Coast.’

‘So what do you have to do for the young Knight-Captain?’ Varric rolled his eyes. He tipped some of the coins into his palm, letting the silver catch the light.

Isabela and Anders entered the room, the pirate laughing as she sauntered up to the table and slouched down into her usual seat.

‘What doesn’t she want to do to the _young Knight-Captain_?’

‘What?’ Anders sounded horrified. ‘Ser Foetus-the-Oppressor?’

‘Yes, the foetus,’ Isabela said, chucking him under the chin with a slender finger. ‘Where is my damned ale?’

Ignoring Isabela, Hawke said, ‘I have to give him a weekly report.’

Isabela started to laugh again. ‘You’re becoming a baby bureaucrat. You _like_ him.'

'I,' Hawke declared, 'am going out.'

She made her way out of the dingy inn, Isabela's voice audible as she left.

'Someone isn't getting laid,' the pirate said, her voice as piercing as it was merry. Varric shushed her. Hawke sighed and stepped into the cool night air.

  

 

**CULLEN**

 

Later that night he stood in the Keep in Meredith's stead and fended off the predatory attentions of the most preened and primped beauties of the courts of the Marches. In truth, he was terrified of them and their perfumed world. He had no idea how to talk to fine ladies and fops. No idea how to carry on any conversation unrelated to his work. Work that he should be doing.

He almost wondered if he had done something wrong to offend Meredith, if she was punishing him by standing him in the Keep like bait. Giving the Order a face, deflecting from all the quiddities of her iron rule.

His thoughts drifted to the other source of his discomfort.

Hawke was not beautiful. She was pretty enough, in a scruffy, unfussy kind of way, but it was not the reason he found himself thinking on her face. Her eyes were sharp and playful and dangerous. She was part of his world, and yet removed from it. Out there on the field every day, fighting the same battle he fought.

But why was he thinking of her? She was a mage. And he was...

He sighed and detached more groping fingers from his arms. The night proved long.

 


	4. reports from kirkwall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> She hated the place, the dank corridors and dusty tapestries, and the cloying stench of oppression. All those things were a world away from Lothering's kind templars and welcoming fields, the leafy spaces, running free with the twins, the countryside open and green. Not here. She hated the carven, leering statues and the rusted-iron scent that smelled like blood.
> 
> And of all those things, she especially hated the man she was about to see.
> 
> Stupid, uptight, beautiful Cullen, who sat behind his desk, who had never had to run or hide or know what it was to be alone and afraid.

**HAWKE**

At ten to noon, Hawke dragged herself off to the Gallows, checking a sigh. There were a million and one things she wished she could be doing. There were a billion things she would rather have been doing than walking herself to the Knight-Captain's office in the Gallows, past the curious templars in the courtyards, and the ones that sneered.

She hated the place, the dank corridors and dusty tapestries, and the cloying stench of oppression. All those things were a world away from Lothering's kind templars and welcoming fields, the leafy spaces, running free with the twins, the countryside open and green. Not here. She hated the carven, leering statues and the rusted-iron scent that smelled like blood.

And of all those things, she especially hated the man she was about to see. No. The _boy_.

Templars, Hawke had long ago decided, were easy. For all their talk of how reprehensible mages were and magic was, Hawke knew any number of them would happily bend her over a desk if she ever gave even the slightest encouragement for her taking. All except the young Knight-Captain, who had so far shown no signs of such an inclination, who eyed her as though she were an abomination about to turn.

Stupid, uptight, beautiful Cullen, who sat behind his desk, who had never had to run or hide or know what it was to be alone and afraid.

His door was just down the hall from the Knight-Commander's office and the First Enchanter's. Even Hawke knew better than to stir those kettles. She rapped on his door impatiently, longing to get it all over and done with.

'Come in,' he called, in the voice that reminded her of Ferelden. Of home. Clipped enough by a Chantry education, just that little bit rough at the edges. Country boy.

Hawke sighed and pushed the door open.

The Knight-Captain was sitting at his desk, looking up at her. Damn his stupid pretty face and his stupid hair. _Remember you hate him_. Maker knew his ego was probably huge enough already. Pompous bastard with his pompous tones and...

'Serah Hawke,' he said. 'Have a seat.'

Hawke pulled the chair out and sat down across from him. 'You,' she said.

His brow furrowed. 'Er,' he said.

As though it weren't bad enough that he'd forced her to give up her blood for a phylactery. Twenty-three years of avoiding templars and skulking around, and she had ruined all her family's good work by not doing the right thing and pushing the Knight-Captain of Kirkwall off the cliff.

No, he had informed her that the Knight-Commander had agreed to let her remain outside of the Gallows, aiding Kirkwall, if... if she presented herself every week to give a detailed report.

He had said it as though he did her a favour.

He tilted his head to one side, obviously expecting a form, or a piece of paper, or anything official and tediously-bureaucratic.

'Waiting for your stupid report?' she said. 'Here it is. Three blood mages, nineteen bandits of assorted types, six abominations, lots of small dragons... one rather large one... and a hundred and seven Maker-damned spiders. No, wait, a hundred and eight, if you count the one I squashed on my privy wall this morning. Also, I now own half a quarry.’ She basked a little. _A hawk crowing_ , Varric called it.

‘Er...’ He had been hurriedly writing down what she’d said, his quill scratching on the vellum, and stopped just before  _spiders_.

He glared at her. ‘A dragon?’ His tone was incredulous.

'Oh, you've never killed one before? They don’t teach that in templar school?' She shrugged and poked idly at the chessboard again, watching him twitch as she moved the pieces about.

'It's not within my duties,' he told her.

Pompous and uptight. Hawke rolled her eyes, but he was still talking.

'And I'd appreciate it if you didn't prevaricate.'

'Prevaricate?' Hawke almost sputtered. 'I'm surprised you even know that word. And I _am_ the idiot who saved you on the Coast from a million abominations. Something I've come to regret.'

'A dragon it is, then,' he said, shaking his head. The quill bobbed across his parchment.

'How long do you intend to force me to keep coming here?' she asked, drumming her fingers on the chessboard. The pieces jittered around. His brow creased.

'I would really prefer it if you didn't do that,' he began, looking at her hand, then gave up when she drummed harder. 'I don't know, Hawke. For as long as the Knight-Commander thinks it wise. You'd be well-advised to remember the leniency she's granting you.'

He certainly was obnoxious. Such a waste of a face.

'Fine,' she said. 'If you want to keep this farce up, so be it.'

He looked up at her, then back down at his papers. Hawke strained to see what he was writing, in impeccably tidy handwriting that flowed across the page. Quite beautiful, old-fashioned handwriting, actually. That surprised her. He didn't come across as a man of letters, he came across as an overbearing, bumbling idiot. What kind of fool would venture out onto the Wounded Coast on his own? _Idiot_.

'Are we done?' she asked, since he was regarding her from over the top of his pen, scrutinising her, judging her. His eyes were very clear. Suddenly her limbs felt a little gangly, a little awkward, her hair a messy mop. Face dirt-smudged, no doubt, from the morning's missions.

Well, damn the _young Knight-Captain._ He couldn't even shave properly, the dark circles under his eyes spoke of long, sleepless nights, and his hair was a golden puzzle of uptight, ridiculous curls. He smelled of the metallic abuses of lyrium, and... fresh laundry.

He didn't answer for a moment. 'Yes,' he said, finally. 'The same time next week, if you please.'

'And what if I don't?'

He drew a long-suffering breath and let it out. 'Your sister--' and got no further before Hawke cut him off.

'We discussed that,' Hawke snapped. 'You took my fucking phylactery. What else do you want? The deal was...'

'It still stands,' he said, eyeing her. 'It was a mutual agreement. The Order appreciates your help, Serah Hawke.'

'If the Order appreciates my help this much, the Order should bloody well pay me.'

'Actually,' he said, 'there is a stipend.' He reached into his drawer, counted out some coin and slid it across the table to her. 'I... am not sure if rewarding people for witch hunts is the wisest idea, but nevertheless. Your reward for three blood mages.'

'There'll be fifty on my report next week if you keep handing out coin like this,' she told him. She spun one of the silvers on the end of her finger.

'The Order trusts you,' he said. ‘And I trust you’ll be prudent, considering your circumstances.’

'See you next Tuesday, Knight-Captain,' Hawke said, her voice thick with scorn, and slammed the chair into his desk on her way out, hard enough that Cullen jumped back in his seat, wide hazel eyes staring up at her, the pieces on his chessboard tumbling over.

 

**HAWKE**

**THE HANGED MAN**

 

 

‘You could at least figure out how to blow up the Gallows or something,’ Varric remarked, ‘while you’re getting bored to death by the Littlest Templar.’

‘It’s hard when I’m falling asleep in my chair,’ Hawke said. ‘Chantry chantry chantry blah templar blah blah oppression. He’s like a soporific.’ She waved a hand in the air. In the background, Fenris looked at her, but said nothing. Aveline didn’t seem convinced either. Isabela was just grinning at her, the way she did whenever the subject of the _young Knight-Captain_ came up.

Hawke cleared her throat. ‘Although I was going to tell you they’re running low on lyrium. Such a pity.’ She had read that off Cullen’s papers. ‘I’m sure a resourceful dwarf like yourself could find some use for that information.’

‘Maybe,’ Varric said offhandedly, which meant yes.

‘Surprised you’re not complaining more about him this time,’ Isabela said casually. She spiked a cherry off the table with her dagger and examined it.

‘I’d complain about him too,’ Anders muttered. ‘He’s a shit.’

‘Oh, Hawke loves complaining about the Knight-Captain,’ the pirate said, winking. She slid the cherry between her red lips and inhaled so it vanished into her mouth with a faint pop. ‘It’s her favourite thing to do.’

‘I don’t blame her,’ Anders said. ‘And his hair. It’s atrocious.’

‘Awful,’ Hawke agreed, and glared at Isabela.

 

**WOUNDED COAST**

 

She was out on the Coast again, wandering around on her own. Something about blood magic, of course. Perhaps she was a fool for venturing out on her own. It was only one mage, or so the story went. Sometimes it was easier just to go alone. Get in motion, not wander around the city corralling companions into her merry band.

Sometimes she thought about the witch Flemeth, growing scales and spreading wings, soaring out over the open sea. The longing in her heart stirred. To fly away. To be free.

Where was the damned cave? Everything looked the same on the Coast after a while. Long, torturous roads that wound in upon themselves and led to dead ends that befuddled. Should’ve brought her sister, who had a damn good head for directions, but Bethany was off talking to the exiled Prince of Starkhaven, no doubt babbling earnestly about duty and love for the Maker and whatever it was Chantry boys babbled about.

Speaking of Chantry boys, there was an unmistakeable flash of curly golden hair below her. She sighed.

Two stray cats roaming the coastal paths. She was still furious at him, at herself for having even considered him decent.  _Always falling for a pretty face._

Damn him and his stupid face and his stupid reports. Here it was, the one thing Hawke hated more than blood magic. Bureaucracy. At least he had said nothing more about her staff, despite his initial admonishments about displaying it in public.

'Why are you here?' she demanded, hopping down from the ledge she had seen him from. He glanced up, his hand on his blade, relaxing only a little when he saw it was her. 'And why in the Fade don't you have an escort? I can't rescue you  _all_  the bloody time, you know.'

'I could say the same for you,' he said, aggrieved.

'Templars don't  _rescue_  mages,' she said. ' _I_  rescue templars.'

He actually scowled at her. It brought her strange satisfaction to know she could provoke some emotion out of him.

'Whatever the Order does or doesn't do is--'

'Actually, it really is my business, since you've got me on a silver chain. Let me guess. You're looking for  _blood magic._ '

He folded his arms over his chest. Handsome as he was, the sullen expression on his face was remarkably offputting. Sullen Cullen. Hawke filed that away for Varric.

'Honestly, you almost died last time you tried to go solo. When are you going to learn? Templars are so squashy.'

'Abominations really aren't that common, Hawke. Especially not exploding from the bodies of recruits.'

Hawke started to laugh. 'You  _don't_ get out enough.'

‘You seem to have a certain knack for finding them,’ he conceded.

‘Does it eat under your skin, knowing an apostate is the best hunter-killer the Order has? Why, you only keep me around because I do all your dirty work for you.’

‘Is there anything I can help you with, Serah Hawke?’ he asked, his tone dispassionate.

She sighed. ‘I’m claiming this bounty.’

He raised an eyebrow. ‘What? You’re claiming this bounty when I’m standing right here?’

‘Halves, Knight-Captain. You’ll need my help. Let’s face it.’ Before he could argue, Hawke breezed past him. ‘You can smite me if you don’t like it. Or you can try, anyway.’

She could hear him mutter something behind her, hear an exhalation of frustration, then the soft clinking of his armour as he followed after her.

‘Don’t you worry,’ she said. ‘I’ll put this in my report. You can claim half the credit, if you’re that hard up for cash. They don’t pay you much, do they.’

‘Hawke…’ He had dropped the honorific. Most people did after they talked to her for a while. ‘I don’t care about the money. This is templar business.’

‘Heard that from you the other day,’ she said. ‘And you were doing  _so_  well before I came along.’

That shut him up.

‘Who are we looking for, anyway?’

‘I thought you knew,’ he said, still sounding annoyed.

‘I get the tip offs,’ she said. ‘They’re not always specific.’ She wanted that bounty, needed it. Needed to get the hell out of that shack. Needed to make a life for herself, her mother and her sister.  _Why’d you have to die, Carver? I would have given you the life you craved. I would claw down the very stones of Kirkwall if I had to, to take back what was lost. Tear down heaven and the Fade, if I must._

Still the demands came. Hawke this. Hawke that. Everyone turned to her for help. Who did she have?

A templar, silent as stone, another dog lord to dog her heels. She almost laughed.  _I’m a puppet on a string. Bluster and brag all you want, Hawke. They know about Beth. If he says dance, you’ll get up and polka._  She wanted to turn around and smack him with a bolt of lightning. Wanted to see how well he would fare against her own blade. Wanted to let him try and smite her so she could knock him aside.

Still, he had kept his end of the bargain.  _Play it right, Hawke. This fine, upstanding young man will probably end up letting you keep the entire bounty._

 

The cave was dark and dank, and predictably infested with spiders.

‘I  _hate_  spiders,’ she said, if only to break the silence. The golden boy of the Gallows wasn’t particularly talkative unless he was earnestly harping on about mages and templars and garbage Hawke didn’t care about.

Blood mages. With almost no exceptions, they were always the same. Someone desperate, clinging to a hope that they wouldn't be discovered. Desperate enough to turn to the knife and the blood. Or callous enough to not care about the damage they might do. Hawke both pitied and despised them. She took no joy in it, but she had learned not to let pity stay her blade.

Instead it was the Knight-Captain who hesitated that day. The mage they found was little more than a child, a boy barely past twelve, cowering against the cavern wall.

'Maker, no,' she heard him mutter, to her surprise, heard a note of anguish in his voice.  _Absurd. Templars aren't people. Templars don’t feel._

'I hate the young ones,' she said. Perhaps there was a chance. Perhaps... but the boy stood up defiantly, and he drew a knife, and pressed it to the white flesh of his arm, scarred countless times.

He cut.

Cullen raised his sword, but he paused. Hawke didn't. First she shocked the boy insensate, then drew a line of energy across his throat so he toppled slowly to the ground. All in the blink of an eye.

Blood, blood everywhere, spattered over both of them, and a sickening silence.

Behind a pillar came a cry. Hawke groaned. There was a child looking out from the shadows. She lifted the light of her staff. His brother, most likely. They looked almost alike, save that this child was half the other's age.

'Shit,' she said, just as the boy ran out screaming, picking up his brother's knife. She raised her staff.

Cullen knocked it aside. 'No, wait,' he said, catching the boy by the scruff and disarming him effortlessly. 'I sense nothing on him.'

'I wasn't going to...' She eyed him. 'How compassionate, for a templar. I could find him a place. There are orphanages...'

'In Kirkwall?' His tone was dry. 'You might as well condemn him to the streets. I'll take him to the Chantry.'

'To be a miniature version of yourself?' Hawke raised an eyebrow.

Cullen shrugged. 'We need new recruits.' It took her a moment to process the fact that he was actually making a joke.

He was shaking his head. ‘This can’t go on,’ he said, pointing his free hand at the small body lying on the ground, motionless. ‘If he had been brought to us. If only mages would learn the dangers of blood magic, if only they would trust the Order. We would…’

‘Slap them in a cell and call it a day’s work,’ Hawke finished unhelpfully.

He closed his mouth, opened it again. ‘If you want to call it that,’ he said. ‘Your own cell seems to be rather large.’

‘I’m your pet mage.’

He averted his eyes, shifted uncomfortably. ‘No,’ he said. ‘You’re not.’ Hawke noted that had touched a nerve with him.

'We're done here,' she said. 'I'm getting out of here before I have to kill more spiders.'

Cullen scanned the cavern. He looked down at the boy, who had stopped struggling. 'Do you know anyone else down here? Family?'

The child shook his head. Cullen studied him for a moment. 'Best to check,' he said to Hawke.

They walked about the cavern's extents, the Knight-Captain half-dragging his reluctant captive with him. Hawke sensed nothing, and said as much.

'We're done,' he acquiesced.

‘And the bounty?’

‘It’s yours,’ he said, his voice quiet.

‘You’re not going to try and take it all for yourself?’

‘I don’t get paid bounties, Hawke.’ His eyes were level with hers, bending over as he was. ‘And I’m not a thief. And I take no joy in profiting off the death of a child.'

She was about to say something biting, but the weariness in his voice made her check herself for once. She didn't let comments like that phase her, couldn't afford to. Instead she rubbed her fingers together in the universal sign for money.

‘I also don’t carry around a vault with me when I go hunting for blood mages.’ He straightened up. ‘If you want your reward, come and give me your report on Tuesday. I’ll have it waiting for you.’ She could hear the distaste in his words.

‘There’ll be more,’ she said. 'I'm a busy girl.'

‘I know.’ For a second, the faintest ghost of a smile fluttered across his face. Had she really seen it? His face was impassive again.

‘You hesitate too much,’ she told him, when the silence crept in between them again. 'He could have...'

He glanced at her. ‘I had to be sure.’ That was all she got from him. He settled back into his silence, looking at the boy they had... what. Rescued?

The Knight-Captain was a loner. That much was obvious. The man was out on the Coast all the time on his own, despite the perils. He was good at his job, even if she was better at hers. Still, he seemed to have something of a death-wish. She considered ribbing him about it, but his expression was so grim that she decided against it.

They parted ways at the Gallows, to Hawke's relief. Their way home had been taxing for both of them, Cullen being preoccupied with his charge. She had tried to make conversation, and gotten monotone, monosyllabic responses. After a while she had noticed the twitchiness in him, the tic in the side of his face. Lyrium, and no small amount of it. The Knight-Captain had problems. Like every single templar in Kirkwall.

 

 

**CULLEN**

'The apostate you suggest we watch,' Meredith said. 'Viscount Dumar tells me I should allow her to continue her pursuits. He seems to think her an asset to the city's security.'

'I've found no reason to detain her so far,' Cullen said. 'She brought back Keran, and my own self.'

'You trust her.'

'I don't like her,' he said, slowly. 'I have little regard for mercenaries, and yet... She has aided the Order. I have no reason to doubt her word. The Guard-Captain vouches for her, too. It seems she has connections in far-reaching places.'

'I read your report,' Meredith said. 'And your note on overcrowding, as you put it. If that's your opinion, I'll allow it. Remain vigilant. The consequences rest on your head, Knight-Captain.'

 

***

 

That was how it started, this strange dance with Hawke, who bounced around the city like a tiny maelstrom in a bottle. He had heard enough of his recruits chattering about her to know that the new dog lord from Ferelden was causing quite a stir. The city assumed she was under the influence of the Order, since she spent so much time popping in and out of the Gallows. Cullen decided it best to leave them under that assumption.

Duties, responsibilities, all the eyes upon him -- and the mountain of reports that seemed to pile higher each day. She was outside, down in Darktown, doing what he should. Free as a bird.

It didn’t matter anyway. At night the nightmares always came, the ones that reminded him of the real reason he didn’t want to spend any time with anyone, no matter how fetching their smile, how soft their fingers brushing against his arm, or their scent lingering after they sashayed away, all daggers.

So he continued to watch from afar, and receive Hawke politely. Professionally. They had an agreement. The Knight-Commander had sanctioned it, after all.

As for the Knight-Commander, she had grown touchier since he’d come to Kirkwall, often finding it necessary to remind him of the dangers they faced, telling him to figure out new ways to tighten the leashes of those in their care. If care was the right word for it. When he’d first arrived, hate had consumed him. He had believed mages should be guarded lock and key, that they had to be watched every minute of every hour. The thought of how even gentle Maddox had unnerved him shamed him now. Kirkwall had more than its fair share of abominations, and yet the Circle was, for the main, filled with safe, law-abiding mages.

For now, Meredith still took his opinions into consideration. He wondered if he was acting as the voice of her conscience, the one she seemed to be burying under a heavy layer of polemic and suspicion. Her intentions were noble, and yet the burning anger in her heart seemed to blaze ever stronger.

 _No, they will not leave the Circle. No visits._ He had asked why.

 _I will not spend resources watching them. We cannot let the people of Kirkwall suffer because_ they _can't control their weak hearts. Let them learn to control their emotions._ He pressed the issue. She cut him off for asking too many questions.

He had wondered why Meredith had agreed to let Hawke roam free, but after her mention of the Viscount, he understood. The game. Always the grand game.

There was a knock on his door. He sighed and stood up, his stomach growling. Too much time spent at his desk. He often forgot his meals these days.

Ser Thrask was waiting outside his office. 'How's Serah Hawke? I saw her stamping through the courtyard.'

‘You know her?’ he asked, as they headed to the mess hall.

Thrask shrugged. ‘We've talked. She's offered me her aid more than once. I thought you'd have her reports. I heard she’s an Amell, like the Warden. Family’s gone to shit, though. Her uncle spent the fortune on gambling and drink. And whores.’

Amell. The sound of that name sent a chill through Cullen.

Hawke looked nothing like the Warden. Yet it explained the odd feeling of recognition he'd had when she had saved him on the Coast, her latent talents stemming from the same veins.

His thoughts were still filled with regret for the Warden. He had never dared venture further than a tenuous friendship. Perhaps she had been curious, once. Certainly never again, not after she had seen him broken in the Tower.

He had left partly out of a desire to put himself as far from her as possible, that she would never see his shame again.

So Cullen had his dreams and his nightmares and his memories, and a hollow void in his heart that he had resolved to let no-one fill.

There were offers, of course, from Circle mages seeking his favour, or Hightown ladies who smiled coquettishly at him from behind plumed fans and accosted him at functions, made him dread going to the Keep. The first was an impossibility that went against all his principles. The second made him cringe. And everything, all the rest of it, reminded him that he was tainted. Never an outgoing person, Cullen drew further into himself. 

He sat in his bed, chest heaving, breath coming short and shallow. Night after night, year after year. Nothing much had changed in that respect. The nightmares were always there, the one part of his life that remained constant.

Desire demons. His conversation with Hawke at the Gallows had almost sent him into a state of panic. How long had he spent in that cage?

In the dreams, Solona sometimes touched him first. Then he touched her... kissed her, held her… and she was no longer herself. A mouth that opened into a yawning chasm of sharp, pointed teeth. Claws that raked his skin to shreds. The pain was real. Sometimes he fought back. Usually she was unbearably strong, and tore him apart, limb by limb, piece by piece. In the dreams she was always beautiful. Had she been so? He couldn't remember. All he had was the version of her that haunted his nights.

Those were not the worst dreams. No, the worst dreams had come after the desire demons unravelled all his secrets. In those he fought her back, smote her and cut her down. There were many variants on the theme. In most of them he was vicious. He bruised her. He claimed her. He marked her body with his pain. She marked him with hers.

If she had never been there, how could it be so real?

Always, blood. Always, a river. Sometimes he woke, frantic, throwing back the bedclothes, checking the sheets beneath him. Never the bloodstains, never any signs that anything had been there with him. Nothing but sweat and seed and that dark, creeping rage inside himself.

Unbidden, an image of Hawke popped into his mind. No preening for her. The same raw power that Solona had possessed, if not more. Yet where Solona was utterly focused and absolutely steady, Hawke was a maelstrom of chaos. She didn’t seem to have a plan beyond bumbling around Kirkwall and destroying anything that stood in her way. And though she was captivating and compelling, as irresistible as her laugh and crooked smile, she was wild and dangerous and not for him to touch.

And he would stay away. He would not falter.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks for reading! :)


	5. strange dance

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> He shrugged. 'You might not care to believe it, but I do care, Hawke. About the Circle and all the mages in it. And so does the Knight-Commander. Even if she can be a little... ah... heavy-handed.'
> 
> Hawke leaned in closer. 'And what about the mages who are outside of it?'
> 
> He kept his gaze steady, though his pulse quickened. 'That would depend on them,' he said.

On the rare day that he had a break from his endless duties, Cullen often wandered the Wounded Coast, the sword at his side and the shield on his back his only companions. It was often said that the Knight-Captain of Kirkwall’s templars had no fear, and it was partly true. Fear, he had in spades. Just not of death. Not his own.

He could hear Hawke informing him he was stupid for walking the sandy paths alone. He had heard her telling him a thousand times over how many bandits she ran into on the Coast, and yet he walked the paths with ease. Perhaps his armour and his name protected him. Perhaps Hawke lied to him. No, he didn't think so. It was not that trouble followed her wherever she went. She went hunting for it, upturning stones and poking through ruins and coming up with a hundred different stories to relate as she leaned over his desk and her laughter chased the gloom of his chambers away.

He walked the lower trails, where the path often broke and he had to clamber over rocks. Hawke said she almost always took the higher roads, where she was all but bound to run into miscreants looking for easy pickings. He came to the cliffs for what solitude and peace he could find. The sound of water breaking against the shore calmed him, drowned his thoughts in white noise. Out here in the open, away from the Gallows, his heart seemed to still.

Today he wandered below the camp where he had seen Wilmod, his eyes tracing fragments of waves as they crashed against the distant islands, the long-ago deaths of ships.

He was just returning to the road home when he caught a glimpse of movement on the rocks lower down. Leather armour, a shock of dark hair, the staff she never bothered hiding. His breath came a little faster. He wound his way down the cliffs towards her.

She was holding a vial in her hand, surveying the water, her brow furrowed. Cullen frowned.

She turned to look directly at him, and made no move to conceal whatever it was she was holding.

‘Fancy meeting you here,’ she said.

‘Hawke.’ He was looking at the little glass vial of grey powder in her hands. ‘What are you doing down here?’

She sighed and seated herself on a boulder. ‘This is...’ Her voice trailed off.

He could feel no magic emanating from it.

‘You don’t have to probe it,’ she said. ‘It’s just ash.’

‘Ash?’ he asked, confused for a second, and then. ‘Oh. I... am sorry.’

‘My father,’ she said. ‘And my... brother.’

She moved aside on the boulder. It was an invitation for him to sit. He looked at the space, then at her. Out of respect for her grief, he accepted.

‘In the Blight?’ he asked.

‘I lost my father a long time ago. Before any of this happened, he fell ill. My brother I lost when we fled Lothering. I couldn’t save him in time.’

Her voice was filled with an overpowering sense of failure. He felt a sudden surge of pity for her. How powerful she was, and how ineffectual she must have felt despite all that power. Locked away in the cage in Kinloch Hold, he had felt a measure of the same.

‘So,’ she said, ‘I... take them with me. And I scatter a little part of them wherever I go. If I find a spot that feels right.’

‘I’m sorry for your losses,’ he said.

‘You’re from Ferelden.’

He nodded.

‘Which part?’

He didn’t want to mention the Hold. ‘Honnleath,’ he told her. He could only meet her eyes in metered doses. They were too bright. Clear, bright and wide.

‘Did you come here because of the Blight?’

‘Yes,’ he said. It was mostly true.

‘I hope you didn’t lose anyone.’

‘My family is safe,’ he said. It was a convenient sidestep. ‘They fled to South Reach. The Blight didn’t travel that far.’

‘Not for lack of trying,’ Hawke said. ‘The Warden stopped it.’

‘She did,’ Cullen said. The catch in his voice made Hawke stop and look up at him, though she didn’t press the matter.

She stood up and opened the vial, taking out a pinch of ash. ‘I’ve been walking these paths for a while. Here’s as good a spot as I’m going to get.’

Resealing the vial carefully, she tucked it into the steel case that hung around her neck, walking to the edge of the cliff.

The wind was blowing the wrong way, but Cullen felt the surge of energy in the air, which changed course and gusted out to sea. Hawke held her fingers up and opened them, letting the ash fly away into the dipping sun. She stood for a while, watching it dissipate, her face still, eyes shadowed.

He didn’t really know what to say. He shouldn’t even have been out there with her. Yet in that moment she had felt painfully human to him. Her grief was real behind the mask. She was real.

He was good at remaining silent. He held his own vigil for the faces he had known and lost. Their names had burned and faded away, lost in the devastation of the Blight and the madness of the Tower. He held them all in his mind.

Finally Hawke turned back to him. ‘Why are you out here on your own again? I’m not always going to be around to save you, you know. I keep telling you.’

Her tone was droll, but he was in no mood to laugh. ‘I went to visit Wilmod’s resting ground.’

‘Cullen,’ she said. ‘I wanted to ask you a question.’ She came back to where he was sitting and planted herself back down, next to him. He noticed she sat a little closer this time, and he could feel the slight pressure of her knee against his. He didn't move away.

She was talking. ‘In the Circle. Are your mages truly happy?’

He could not answer that. Not perfectly honestly. ‘As happy as I am,’ he said. Nobody in the Gallows was happy. Not the mages, not the servants, not the templars. The Circle functioned. If it was beginning to function perhaps less smoothly than it ought, nobody dared say a word. Instead they came to him and gave him words to direct at Meredith, words he tried to frame as reasonably as possible but that had her staring coldly at him. Even First-Enchanter Orsino came to Cullen to rant about his problems, never mind that Orsino's office was directly across the hall from Meredith's.

Hawke continued. ‘You trust me, but you don’t trust them.’

‘No,’ he said. ‘I’ve seen children turn on their families and destroy entire communities. The ones who are born with a strong gift, like your own, whose parents hide them away without training. You must have had someone to guide you.’

Hawke’s face seemed suddenly tired. She grasped the steel-clad phial. ‘My father,’ she said. ‘And a templar friend of his. Then it was me, myself and I. You chose to be what you are. I didn’t. I was never offered a choice. Be a mage, or be _people_.’

 _Mages aren’t people._ _They are weapons._ He wished he had never said those damned words.

'I heard dark stories about Meredith's lapdog,' she said, and for a moment he thought she meant him. He'd heard the term a thousand times before. Hawke continued. 'That Alrik fellow. Nasty piece of--'

Dimly, he remembered the look on Ser Alrik's face when the older templar had loomed over him. A look that said; _fear me._

The man was vile. Cullen knew that well. He was also good at playing innocent, and once, when Cullen had assigned someone to watch him surreptitiously, he had turned up nothing. Just Alrik being a model templar. Alrik had filed a complaint to Meredith about being watched, and Meredith had told Cullen in no uncertain terms that _whomsoever_ was keeping tabs on the Knight-Lieutenant should be more circumspect. By which she really meant -- _stop._

No mage would speak out against him. Cullen himself had never said anything against the man, just taken the broken nose and ribs from Alrik's fists.

‘I loathe the man,’ Cullen said vehemently. ‘More than you. When I first came here...’ He shook his head. ‘Believe me, if I had proof of any misdeeds I’d be the first to stand him against the wall. But I can’t just pillory the man because I want to.’

He paused. ‘You once said you could go where I could not. See what I miss. Talk to people who won’t talk to me.’

‘Yes,’ she said.

‘So help me,’ he said.

'Help me help you,' she told him.

'Knight-Commander Meredith has always favoured Alrik and Karras,' he said. 'They're smart enough not to bite the hand that feeds them, and they give her no cause to turn upon them. Nor suspect them of any wrongdoing. But Alrik is beginning to overstep his bounds, I think.'

'What do you mean?'

'He motioned for the Rite of Tranquility to be applied to the entire Circle. The man has gone mad.' Some part of him could hardly believe he was voicing his concerns out loud. To a mage.

But Hawke was not the enemy. Perhaps not quite a friend either. She was--

'And?' she asked.

'The Knight-Commander turned him down, of course,' he said. But the doubt was there in his words. He had wondered, for a moment, if she had been about to agree with Alrik's petition, and his own uncertainty worried him.

Hawke drew a breath. 'So you want me to do what your own Order should be doing.'

He stopped the protest that had been on his lips. 'Yes,' he said with a long sigh. 'You're right. The Chantry doesn't care, half the Gallows is busy just trying not to explode and I don't know whom I can trust. But there's no excuse.'

'So this is why you spend so much time on your own,' Hawke said.

He shrugged. 'You might not care to believe it, but I do care, Hawke. About the Circle and all the mages in it. And so does the Knight-Commander. Even if she can be a little... ah... heavy-handed.'

Hawke leaned in closer. 'And what about the mages who are outside of it?'

He kept his gaze steady, though his pulse quickened. He was acutely conscious of her knee, pressing closer against his. 'That would depend on them,' he said.

For once she didn’t answer back. Instead her eyes watched him, and something in her face seemed to shift.

‘Someone once told my father something,’ she said. ‘ _Rule does not serve by caging the best of us._ ’ A templar. He was a good man. You?’

‘You know nothing of cages, Serah Hawke,’ he told her, and made the thought die there. ‘I can escort you back to the city,’ he said.

She snorted. ‘Do I look like I need your help? Try not to get yourself killed. Again.’ And like that, she was gone, a blur across the sandy paths, burning lyrium just to make a point.

 

**INTERLUDE**

**THE OLD TOWER**

 

'Have the young one watch,' the closest mage said.

The spikes on the cage they wheeled out protruded from all the bars but the bottom. Cullen could see how they overlapped, that if they shut the door there was nowhere to stand without being pierced from all sides. He felt sick.

The abominations and shades forced his companion towards the cage. Cullen struggled to get free, save them both, but inhuman arms held him, pinioned in a vile embrace.

'Have no fear,' the older templar said. 'I go to the Maker. You must be strong.' The conviction in his eyes didn't take away the fear in Cullen's.

'Stop,' Cullen was screaming, ‘Take me instead.' His words were met with laughter.

'Why? We have so much more planned for you.'

He shut his eyes, but they were forced open. There was no lyrium in his body. They had held the templars long enough for all of their reserves to dissipate. He was unravelling.

They pushed the templar in and forced the door shut, and then he did scream. Screamed for the Maker.

They took his blood. They took Cullen’s, and raised demons.

 

It took his friend days to die, and the whole time they kept Cullen's eyes open so he couldn't even blink, so the tears ebbed silently down his face until there was nothing left to weep.

First came the visions, a fence, a small cottage in the country, a wife standing at the gate. A wife with her face, but he knew it was impossible. He had never expected her to love him. When he looked down at her hand, outstretched to greet him, her hand was long with talons, her skin a mottled violet.

That was his demon, faithful to him through all the years that would follow, even after she was dead, banished. She lived on in him.

The offer was simple. Renounce his vows, embrace the dark bond, become the mortal thrall of a demon that knew desire. She showed him a thousand dreams. Wealth, power, money. He was a hero, a king, a martyr celebrated through all the ages.

 _No_ , he said.

He had kept one thing from Honnleath, an old coin his brother had pressed into his hand. For luck, he had said. _Bring nothing_ , the templars had said. He was thirteen, leaving his family for the last time, and he sewed the coin into the hem of his pocket.

He thought of it, not quite foolish enough to reach for it and tell the demon it was there, solid and constant. The coin in his pocket was real. The house and wife and the vision of him as Knight-Commander, those were not his to have.

Oh, but she came to know him well. She wrung from him the sad little infatuations of a young heart, a boy who had grown up in the confines of the Circle. _Solona Amell smiles at me_.

Cullen Rutherford was a late bloomer, an awkward young man who had had no experience with girls his age. Templars did not fraternise, neither with their charges nor their brethren. Or, well, perhaps they did, but those incidents were swept under the rug.

_Oh, see how she smiles._

It was just a passing fancy. It was a pretty, wistful impossibility, no more than a girl saying _I'm sorry, but..._ or turning out to be married, or any of those things.

But when she smiled at him and her face tilted just so and she tipped his king over on the chessboard... He almost forgot, sometimes.

No.

Once, he was in the library when she walked past, the sleeve of her robe brushing across his gloved hand. He could not feel it, and yet his blood thrilled to the thought of her touch, removed as it was.

And hadn't he been filled with the most violent of urges? To have and to keep. To take what was his.

_No._

He had never thought that. He had stood and watched her go past, and he had smiled, when no-one could see him.

_No, you wanted her. You dreamt about her that night, though you knew it was wrong._

All the small things, circling into one throbbing wail of pain that beat against his barriers. _You would have taken her, if nobody had been there to see it. Just the way you hid your smile._

He screamed _no_ a thousand times, until he was kneeling on the floor and he no longer knew where he was, if demons stood before him, or Solona, or the others.

Her fists beat against him, her face streaked with tears.

_I never had this memory. I never..._

The images were relentless.

_...never touched... I..._

Maker, he had wanted to. Hadn't he? He had hungered for her, dreamt about making love to her, though he could hardly call it that now.

_I can make this all stop. You don't have to hurt her anymore. Let me in. Be mine._

It went on, and the laughter went on, until he barely knew his name. He could only say, again and over, the words of the Chant. That he was a templar. That he would remain true.

Until she asked him, again. _Who are you?_

And he didn't know.

And the next day, the Warden came.

 

 

In the aftermath of all the madness, it was her pity that had hurt, and his guilt that shamed him the most, made him turn from her. The rage -- well, he was less than proud of that, but that was something easily explained. What he had seen himself do to her left him a ruin. He spoke to no-one of it.

Nobody asked. They kept away from him. Why? Because he had survived? He felt the same way about himself. He should have died there.

Cullen felt pulled thin, his secrets almost transparent. The pain was all in his head. It hurt no less, and he could tell no-one. He went through the motions. He pressed for reform, railed at the Knight-Commander for his leniency. For his forgiveness. Greagoir held him and his demands at arm's length, treated him as though he were made of glass.

One day, Greagoir called him to his study, where the remains had been scraped off the walls and floor. Cullen could hardly bear to be in that room, could not sit there without seeing it as it had been.

The Knight-Commander sat at his desk and handed him his transfer orders.

'Do not see it as a punishment,' Greagoir said. 'Perhaps a new beginning is what you need, Cullen.'

He sat stiffly in his chair and said nothing while Greagoir sighed and reached down for something in a drawer.

He pulled out a flat box and slid it across the table. 'Take this with you.'

Puzzled, Cullen lifted the lid.

A chessboard. He almost dropped it in shock. Did he know? Had he somehow seen into his dreams? No, of course not. He had seen Cullen playing chess with Solona in the library. Had said nothing, merely smiled indulgently. Suddenly Cullen hated him for all those casual allowances. _A man died in a cage. Another was torn to shreds, piece by piece, week by week. And I..._

But the board was heavy in his hands.

'Why?' he asked, his throat thick. 'I don't need this. We are not supposed to keep--'

'Some things,' the Knight-Commander said, 'we should not forget.'

He didn't understand.

‘The important things,’ Greagoir said. 'Let this--' he waved his hand expansively, indicating the Tower, the restored room-- 'let this go.'

Cullen put the lid back on the box, but he let it sit on his lap.

'It seems you think leniency is our great failing,’ Greagoir said. ‘The Knight-Commander of Kirkwall has a certain reputation for strictness. Not that I can fault her. Her history... is something I'm sure she can tell you herself.'

He steepled his fingers on the desk. 'Remember who you were before all this happened,' he said, his voice soft. ‘I pray one day you open your eyes again.’

Cullen's last glimpse on his way out, clutching the box, was of the sadness in Greagoir's eyes. The pity.

So he left for Kirkwall, Greagoir’s gift hidden under his shield, an old coin sewn into a pocket.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just wanted to say thanks for all the kind comments and kudos so far. I wasn't actually expecting anyone to comment at all, and I actually do love to know what works in the story for readers (and what doesn't work), as I began this as an exercise in writing romance/sexual tension, something I've never really taken a proper stab at before. Please forgive the bumpy first few chapters :) I found writing UST REALLY DIFFICULT. Do feel free to offer suggestions or just general thoughts and thanks again for reading!
> 
> I originally wrote all of Skyhold's chapters in a much shorter time, and then ended up being dragged into the hell that is Kirkwall... Skyhold was just much easier to write (although much more fluffy (and gratituously smutty) I'm afraid) because Cullen's major conflicts have been pretty much resolved at that point, even if he's still got residual lyrium issues. He's just a far happier person there.


	6. definitely not bait

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'Knight-Captain,' Hawke said, in mock-horror, 'I do believe you are bending the rules for me.'
> 
> Cullen attends another ball.

Hawke, contrary to expectations, was always punctual for her weekly reports. She told him it was so she could get the chore of speaking with him done early, so she could go out and set things on fire.

She was oddly pragmatic in her own way, and once she had settled into the routine of their weekly sessions, she seemed to revel in listing all the things she laid waste to in the course of a single week. He couldn't deny his admiration was genuine, despite her bragging.

If he mentioned a lead to her, she would pursue it. He watched her counts rise, until she had killed more blood mages and maleficars than any templar he had ever known.

Sometimes she lingered, after her perfunctory reports, and he was not quite sure when she made the switch from talking at him to talking to him. Hawke's easy nature drew conversation from him, put him a little more at ease. She had grown up in rural Ferelden, and though he did not like speaking of their homeland, there was something comforting in the familiar patterns of her speech and the wistful way she sometimes spoke of Lothering. 

When pressed she would say only that Kirkwall was home now, that there was nothing but to make the best of it. Eventually she told him they were trying to retake her old family estate, spoke of the circumstances behind her mother's loss of status. Hawke, of noble blood. Titleless or no, she seemed a far cry from the girl he had first seen camping in the courtyard of the Gallows.

One morning she came in and announced she was going on a journey of sorts, and that she was giving him fair notice. That the Order would probably miss her while she was gone. That the blood mage population of Kirkwall would no doubt triple in her absence. Hawke hardly took anything seriously if she could help it.

He had gathered the reclamation of their ancestral home weighed heavily on her mind, but he was still surprised when she declared the extent of her quest.

'You're really going to the Deep Roads? On this insane expedition?'

'I owe Varric,' she said.

'Money's not everything,' he said.

'I owe Varric more than money.' She shrugged. 'What, you don't think I can handle myself?'

He was silent for a moment. 'No, I know what you're capable of.'

'So? What's the problem? I didn't think you'd care,' she said, her fingers toying with the frayed edges of her pocket. 'Almost sounds like you're going to miss my weekly visits.'

He cleared his throat, and she glanced at him, adding, 'I'm assuming, of course, that the Order permits. In return I'll kill all and any blood mages I stumble across.' She was fiddling with his chessboard again, trying to balance the pieces on each other. She had almost managed to build a pyramid the week before.

A while ago, he would have told her he needed to consult the Knight-Commander. Now he just sighed and let it go. He had not forgotten that he owed her his life, and nor had she, by how she brought it up at every opportunity.

Besides which, he didn't think he could stop her. If the Knight-Commander questioned him... He put it out of his head. By then, Hawke would be gone, and questions could wait till she returned, and if she did not...

'Hawke,' he said, reaching out awkwardly to touch her shoulder. Startled, she looked up at him. 'Your life would have been far easier if you hadn't helped me on the Coast that day.'

'I wouldn't have had to deal with you,' she said, but she didn't move away. 'You're a real pain in the ass. And I'm not really sure how you've survived this long.'

'Why did you do it?' He dropped his hand.

She shrugged. 'Did you want me to leave you there to die?'

'No, but...' He was thinking of Ferelden again, but not of the countryside. His face pressed against the cold stone. His sobs, echoing in his ears.

'I never could just leave things alone. Even if they're templars.'

He sighed. 'I... You've been a good friend to me,' he said, though the words surprised him. 'A better one than I deserve.'

She didn't say anything for a moment, and he began to regret it.

'You aren't supposed to make friends with mages,' she said. 'I know the rules.'

'Technically, you're not a part of this Circle,' he said.

'Knight-Captain,' Hawke said, in mock-horror, 'I do believe you are bending the rules for me.'

She laughed when he sputtered, took his hand and shook it. 'I am a better friend than you deserve,' she said, her voice light as she let his hand fall. 'See you, Knight-Captain.'

The memory of her fingers burned on his palm.

 

**FROM THE DEEP ROADS**

Cullen was kept busy by Meredith’s absences, which left him with little time for anything but keeping up with the constant missives and meetings that came to his desk. More than ever he wished she had appointed more Knight-Captains. Not just to spread the workload, but for the camaraderie he missed.

He was making his way back from the Viscount’s Keep when news of Hawke’s return came in.

Odd, how his feet seemed to be leading him to the docks.

On the way, he was accosted by one of the junior templars. ‘Ser,’ the girl said, ‘There’s a lot of contraband. Perhaps you should inspect it personally.’

Inwardly, Cullen groaned and wished Hawke would learn to be more circumspect. He was not looking forward to the coming altercation.

Carts upon carts of gold and jewels and strange, wonderful objects and icons came rolling into the thronged square. He had to push his way past the crowds to see her.

Her face was smeared with dirt, her hair damp with sweat, but her chin was still held high, and her eyes were as sharp as ever. Pretty, he had heard her called. It seemed a feeble word for her. Briefly, he saw her standing on the Coast, her staff out, energy pulsing around her, and he shifted uncomfortably.

For someone who had just become unbelievably wealthy, she looked surprisingly pensive. He glanced at the carts again, his brow wrinkling. Some of the objects the expedition had brought home practically glowed.

She nodded at him when she saw him. ‘Hallo, Knight-Captain,’ she said. ‘How’s things? Miss me in the Gallows? Such a fun place.’

'Hawke...' He sighed and waved his hand at her haul. 'I'm going to have to inspect those, you know,' he said.

Hawke gave him the look she gave him when she couldn't tell if he was serious. ‘You need to inspect my booty? My chest?’ she asked, patting the padlocked wooden box nearest to her and gesturing at her breastplate. Behind her, Varric Tethras heaved a long sigh. Cullen felt the colour rise in his cheeks. Playing a game of wits with Hawke was usually a stupid idea.

‘You can’t bring these...’ He touched one of the odd artefacts lying on top of the nearest wagon. The aura emanating from it was unmistakably magical. ‘These...’

Hawke smacked his hand away. ‘Those are just trinkets,’ she said, rapping him on the shoulder with a gloved finger. ‘I don't care if the Order's hard up for cash. You can’t have them.’

‘You know the rules against bringing unsanctioned...’

‘What seems to be the problem?’ Varric Tethras sidled over. ‘Hello, Knight-Captain.’

‘Look, it’s nothing personal,’ Cullen tried again.

‘I’ve got special dispensation from the Knight-Commander herself to bring these valuable research components into the city.’

‘No you don’t.’ Cullen held out his hand. ‘Papers.’

‘Ask her yourself,’ Varric said. ‘Seriously. I can call her down right now.’

‘She won’t be back until next week,’ Cullen told him. ‘I’m confiscating anything in here that violates Order regulations.’

Varric opened his mouth, but Hawke stepped forward. ‘No, no, let him, Varric. We’ll reclaim them when the Knight-Commander gets back. But I want every single item you take catalogued and itemized.’

Cullen groaned. There were hundreds of relics in the first cart alone, perhaps even thousands.

‘Hope you have a lot of templar bureaucrats free,’ she added, leaning back against the cart. ‘Or you might be doing a little bit of paperwork.’

‘Unless, of course,’ the dwarf said, not missing an opening, ‘you’d rather trust us to take good care of them until the Knight-Commander herself confirms our agreement.’

Cullen drew a deep breath, feeling the crowd’s eyes upon him. ‘Fine. For services rendered to the Order and the city, I’ll take your word for it.’

‘Thanks for nothing, _friend_ ,’ Hawke said as she passed him by.

 

 

**DEFINITELY NOT BAIT**

 

Meredith returned a few days later, and summoned Cullen to her office. She was glaring at a scroll in her hands.

‘Knight-Commander,’ he said gingerly.

She nodded curtly. Nothing about where she had been, not that he was surprised.

Cullen could practically feel the weight of the Knight-Commander’s disapproval as she leafed through the missive.

‘A masquerade,’ she said, her voice thick with contempt. She read through it again. ‘An invitation from Dumar himself, urging the Order’s representation at this gathering of the Marches. The city tears itself apart from within, and they throw a ball.’

She threw the parchment down on the table and rapped a thin finger on her desk.

Cullen had a feeling he knew what would come next, and he almost groaned.

‘You will, of course, be attending in my stead,’ Meredith said. ‘I’ll have a mask made up for you.’

‘But…’

‘The Order must make itself available to the nobility, if needs be.’

'But I...'

'Some of the Orlesians seem particularly interested in discussing whatever it was that you debated so charmingly at the Viscount's dinner last season. The Order's coffers received a fair few donations in the days that followed. Well done.'

‘I…’

‘Your duties, Knight-Captain. See to them.’

As Cullen left, mortified, he could have sworn he caught a wry, amused smile on the Knight-Commander’s face.

 

**OF TEMPLARS AND BALLS**

 

The ball was expectedly awful. Painted peacocks, gyrating widowers and widows pressing their needs upon youths young enough to be their offspring. Cullen groaned behind his ridiculous mask. It had a garish arrangement of velvet and feathers that hid the top of his head but not his mouth, and so he was forced into the rictus of pained smiles and polite conversation.

After the tenth dance with Lady So-And-So, he had completely lost track of what he was saying, or doing, or thinking. Move this foot here. Turn this way. Hold your arm out here. Let her touch you. Or let him. Listen to inappropriate propositions. Decline politely. Assure the noble that the Order's intentions are for the best of the Marches.

Cullen had formed an observation. When he directed more questions at the Knight-Commander, she found more balls for him to attend.

There was a flurry of movement, and a young woman, hidden behind a similarly-feathered mask, appeared and extended her arm to him. It was somewhat a relief to be dancing with someone his own age, even if he still didn't relish it, and he took her arm with slightly more enthusiasm than he had the rest of that night's partners. Something about the way she moved seemed familiar. She wore a fine blue gown that clung and left little to the imagination. Cullen eyed her for other reasons than that, of course. She seemed oddly familiar. He could just make out her smile beneath the rim of her mask. She pulled his hand onto the curve of her waist.

He turned her around the dancefloor politely. Masses of these awful functions had at least let him learn how to leave his partners' feet unscathed. Touch, reduced by formality, was almost tolerable.

There was definitely something about her. The smooth expanse of skin at her bare neck and décolletage. The press of her body against his as she leaned into him. The particular timbre of her voice... Oh, _no._

Oh, she was familiar.

Cullen stammered and almost tripped.

‘Knight-Captain!’ It was the recruit Hugh, dressed in an ungainly, foppish suit, hurrying up to him with a scroll in his hand. 'I've word from...'

The young woman started, and suddenly she tore her mask off and stared daggers into Cullen. Hugh seemed taken aback. Caught between the glare the young lady was shooting his commanding officer and the glare his commanding officer was in turn giving him, he thrust the paper in his hand at the Knight-Captain and fled.

‘Hawke,’ Cullen managed.

‘ _You_ ,’ she said.

He should have known better.

It was odd seeing her in the garb of the Amells. The dress she wore was embroidered with the sigil of her house, something he had failed to notice, distracted by the rest of her. Her blue eyes were outlined with a dash of kohl, but other than that her face was fresh and clear, in sharp contrast to the dancing faces around them, painted even under their masks.

She looked... radiant. He swallowed and found himself rubbing his palms on his trousers. He felt even more foolish standing there in his stupid mask, and he pulled it off.

Things were changing for the Order. An apostate, noble or no, openly flouting the Circle. Sanctioned by the Knight-Commander herself. Cullen had questions to which there were no answers.

The dynamic had shifted between them. When she had first come to his office, she had been the one stepping out of place, entering a realm where she was most vulnerable. Here, he was a commoner. He knew what the nobles thought of him. A grunt from Ferelden. Meredith's boy lackey.

The girl who stood before him wore a sapphire the size of a pigeon's egg, blue like her eyes, and a dress laced with gold thread that must have cost more than his yearly salary. He remembered her standing on the steps outside the Gallows, half-starved and covered in grime. Here she was, wealthy beyond measure, a noblewoman who had reclaimed her family's name and Hightown estate. A mage who had the Viscount's ear, who was apparently the only person the Arishok would deign to speak to.

She should be in the Gallows. He knew it. Yet he couldn't process the idea of her being cloistered behind the stone walls. If it was better for the city that she be allowed to roam free -- but those thoughts took him to unsettling places.

He opened his mouth instead. 'It's strange to see you so... formal.'

'Oh, you like the dress?' She shrugged her bare shoulders.

Before he could shut his mouth, the words tumbled out.

'I liked you better the way I met you,' he found himself saying, and immediately put his hand to his head.

Hawke's mouth opened slightly. She appeared, amazingly, speechless.

Finally, while Cullen tried hard not to relish the moment, she said, 'Why were you such an asshole the other day?'

'I have a position to uphold,' he said. 'You make my life difficult sometimes, Hawke.'

'I thought we had an agreement,' she said. 'I saved your life, I scratched your back, you scratch mine.'

'You could have opted to cover up those carts,' Cullen pointed out. 'Instead you flaunted imbued items. You paraded all your forbidden goods from Lowtown to Hightown.'

'Nonsense,' Hawke said. 'I had all my clothes on.'

Cullen knew he was bright red in the face, by the heat in his cheeks. He tried his best to ignore the condition.

'You could have found a better place to be than by my wagons,' she was saying.

'Am I supposed to believe you had any legitimate reason for dragging your spoils around the city, other than bragging?'

'No,' she said, 'you'll find that quite accurate.' She put her hands on her hips. 'Apparently I'm a very wealthy woman now, Knight-Captain. And a noble. One who can barely hear herself think in this crowd.' She fanned herself and headed to the nearest balcony, beckoning at him.

'I know,' he said. He followed her outside.

'But you don't care about those things,' she remarked. 'You impound everyone. Almost, that is.' She draped herself over the balcony, tossed the mask on a bench. 'The Knight-Commander has her... deals.'

'Those deals seem to work in your favour,' he noted.

'Doesn't mean I admire her for them,' she said. 'You are...' She seemed to check herself. 'You're an asshole to everyone alike.' She smiled as she said it.

It was the strangest compliment he had ever received.

'I'm tired of this place,' she added, yawning. 'You'll excuse me. I haven't had much sleep since I got back from the Deep Roads. Worst place ever, by the way. I don't recommend it.'

'How many things did you kill while you were down there?' he asked.

'It's not Tuesday,' Hawke said. 'Breaking protocol, Cullen. My word.'

She straightened up. 'Anyway, it's been a long day, and an even longer night. I should go.'

'I, ah, I could walk you to your door,' Cullen said. He was only looking for an excuse to leave. He had done his duty. It was on the way. A gentleman should...

Hawke grinned, obviously finding something amusing. For a moment he thought she was going to make a joke, or laugh at him, but she shrugged. 'Why not? Let's give Kirkwall something to talk about.'

'Let's not,' Cullen said, and he handed her the mask she had tossed aside. 'I'm just glad you didn't bring the staff. Seneschal Bran would have had quite the fit.'

'I thought he'd be here,' Hawke said, tapping her fingers against her lips.

'Who? Bran?'

'I wore this dress specifically for his benefit.' She smiled.

Something in his stomach went a little numb. 'Are you...'

'He's such a waste of a face, don't you think?' She leaned back against the balcony and stretched her neck back. 'He's so mean to me. I think he likes me.'

She snorted and held the mask up to her face, affecting an Antivan accent that sounded appalling even to Cullen’s ears. ‘Ooh, Thenethchal. I come from tho very far away. In Antiva they tell thorieth of your name and your mathculine beauty. Oh, my mask! It has fallen!’

She let the mask drop to reveal a toothy grin, and ran a hand over the side panel of her fitted dress, an action that made Cullen swallow and look away. He had only ever seen her in armour, since the day she had saved his life, and now it was patently clear that the hard angles of her body had rounded out into curves that were terribly distracting. 'I had the neckline lowered just that bit more. Thought I'd at least get to infuriate him a little.'

'I, ah... I should take you home. You said you were tired.'

Hawke aquiesced.

'Don't tell me Bran Cavin's your ideal man.' Cullen tried not to put any particular weight to the words as they walked down the streets of Hightown. He found himself wishing the winding stairs were longer. The moment they had left the Keep, Hawke had ripped off her mask and thrown it at the nearest wall. A beat later, she had torn his from him and done the same thing, and they had stood there while her shoulders heaved with laughter and Cullen tried to avoid looking at her.

Hawke laughed. 'Maybe I like my men uptight and condescending.' She punched his arm lightly.

He had no idea what to say to that, and soon Hawke was chattering away about something else, telling him how she loved provoking the seneschal and his master both, and templars, and all the rest of Kirkwall.

He walked her to her door. It was strange, watching her vanish into the towering mansion. As she stepped into the warm firelight, he saw her mabari greet her, and an older woman, who he assumed was her mother. Leandra Amell. She caught sight of him through the doorway, and then Hawke nodded at him and pulled the door shut, leaving him alone in the cold night.

 

***

 

On Tuesday he was in the training yard, beating out his frustrations on a ragged dummy when she appeared earlier than usual. He only noticed her leaning against the fence post when she spoke. Oddly, she carried a basket with her.

'You're making me feel sorry for that poor thing, Knight-Captain.' Hawke produced an apple from the basket and proceeded to bite into it.

Caught off guard, he stumbled and had to steady himself. 'You're early.' He tried not to look at her lips pressing against the white flesh of the apple. He hadn't been sure she would turn up. Not now that her power and influence had burgeoned. The day before, she had sent him a brief note with the whereabouts of a blood mage coven, and he had wondered if it meant she wouldn't be attending his office in person. He had ruined his platemail fighting off the wave of abominations in the cavern with his troops.

'You're observant. I've got things to do today.' Her gaze ran over him, up, down and up again. He could feel it on him, piercing the sweat that soaked through the thin linen shirt he was wearing. He could also feel his accursed cheeks warming more than any amount of exercise could provoke. There were times where he wished his complexion were darker solely so his propensity to flush wasn't as horribly obvious.

'Give me a moment,' he said. 'I'll... freshen up.' By which he meant wiping his face with a washcloth until the burning faded from his cheeks.

'You're handy with that blade,' Hawke remarked. She said it innocently. The twinkle in her eyes was anything but.

'Training is a necessary evil,' Cullen said, cursing himself for sounding thick even as he said it. 'What, er. What's keeping you busy today?'

'Can't tell you,' Hawke said. She bit down on her apple.

'I thought you were here to file a report?'

'Oh, I am. But I couldn't possibly give you today's report until next Tuesday. Rules and all,' she said, baiting him. The apple had narrowed into a core, and she tossed it into a bush, to Cullen's exasperation.

'What? It's good for the plants,' she said.

Cullen sighed and led the way to his office. Everyone in the courtyard was looking surreptitiously at him and Hawke, who was trailing behind him as she was wont to do. Cullen suspected she did it so she could make him feel even more flustered. He avoided turning to look at her.

'A templar without his plate. It’s like seeing a dog without its fur.'

He sighed again, relieved when they finally stepped into the privacy of his office. 'Have a seat,' he said, drawing out the chair for her, finding refuge in chivalry. She seemed to appreciate it. Her face lit up everytime he held a door for her, pulled out a chair, or waited for her to step inside ahead of him. She had once made fun of him for his 'Chantry-boy manners', but without malice.

‘Hawke,’ he said, awkwardly, motioning to the basket she carried. ‘What’s this?’

She made a noise that was half a groan and half a sigh. ‘My... _mother_... wants me to give this to you.’ She set it down on the desk and took a seat. In his chair, no less.

‘What?’

‘She says I have to thank you for your kindnesses.’ Hawke made the words into epithets.

Cullen, bemused, took a piece of bread. It did smell exceedingly good, and he was hungry.

‘Well, give her my thanks,’ he said. There was probably a rule about taking gifts from the mothers of apostates. In fact, he knew full well there was. He bit into it anyway, feeling oddly rebellious.

‘Also mentioned something about keeping me out of trouble,’ Hawke muttered. ‘Whatever that means.’

‘It means you have to listen to what I say,’ he said with a wry smile, through the last of the bread, and she snorted. 'I'm surprised she--' he started.

'My mother,' Hawke interrupted, 'knows how to play the game. It's almost as though she was born to it. Really, she just likes you because you oppress me.'

He knew better than to respond.

‘I’m fabulously rich now,’ Hawke said from her new chair, tossing a gold coin in the air and flipping it at him, more than his monthly wage. ‘It feels odd. There’s a lot of people who smile and genuflect at me, but if they could they’d be at my bedside in the night, daggers drawn.’

She shrugged. ‘I’ve gotten what I wanted, haven’t I? Faced down demons to get my family’s name and property back, and yet Bethany isn’t even here anymore.’ She hadn't mentioned that the last time he'd seen her.

‘What happened?’ He retrieved the coin from where it had fallen and slid it back across the table to her, though she scoffed at it.

‘She contracted the Blight,’ Hawke said. ‘Wardens saved her. Of course, they also conscripted her and took her away.’ Her words were nonchalant, but there was a pain in them she couldn't mask.

‘I’m very sorry to hear that,’ he said. ‘Is there anything I can do?’

She put her head in her hands, a gesture she had picked up from him. ‘Laughable, isn’t it?’

‘Don’t say that,’ he said. He leaned against the desk, looking down at her. 'I didn't think you'd come today.' No matter how bland he made the words, he felt the weight of them.

Hawke was making him even more uncomfortable than usual. She sat back in her chair, studying him, strangely silent, her finger tapping against the base of her lower lip. Her scrutiny was the single greatest cause of his fidgets and coughs and blushes.

He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Was there something you wanted to ask?’

'It can wait,' she said. 'Do feel free to go freshen up. Training makes a man potent, and you certainly smell so.'

He stammered, told Hawke to make herself comfortable and headed out for his quarters to change into a shirt that wasn't completely soaked through. The heat of the Gallows today was almost unbearable. Kirkwall's weather was ghastly at the best of times, either battered by the rain or beaten down on by the furious sun.

When he returned, an empty form for her report in his hands, Hawke was by his bookshelves, leafing through one of his tomes. She glanced up when he came in.

'Seeing you without armour,' she remarked. Her eyes lingered, making him rub at his neck, ill-at-ease. ‘You look naked.’

'Your last good idea sent my platemail back to the smithy,' he told her.

'It's not like you pay for it,' she said.

He didn't respond to that, and she turned her attention back to the book she held in her hands. A slender finger traced the vellum absently. 'This is quite the collection you have here, Knight-Captain. All yours?'

'For the most part, yes,' he said, feeling an odd surge of pride. He had spent quite some time and effort amassing the contents of his shelves. Literacy was the domain of nobles and academics, those who didn't have to wake before dawn and till the fields until the light ran out. Books were for those who could afford candles at night. Such expectations were far beyond the son of a farmer from a simple village. As a child, he had gathered with his siblings around the storytellers that sometimes passed through Honnleath. Moreso, he had watched the readers who brought books with them, occasionally holding up brightly-illuminated pages to the village children.

It was not the pictures that fascinated him, but the words so neatly-ordered, forming a coded promise of secrets kept from him.

Half the reason he had longed to join the Order was the benefit of a Chantry education. He had never admitted this to anyone, not even his sister Mia. The gift of literacy fascinated him. He wanted to know more than what the elders had to tell him. If he had the power to read from their sources, surely he would know what they knew. The world would open to him, illuminated.

And it had opened, after years of hard study. And he was still lost in the darkness.

Hawke, oblivious to his thoughts, had put the book back on the shelf and picked out another. She flipped through it with a familiarity that made him slightly envious. Of course. She was the daughter of a once-noble family. Her father had been a mage. She had been born to higher things than he. She would have been a cloistered prisoner, if... His thoughts confused him. The confusion made him uncomfortable. He pushed it all out of his mind, or tried to.

' _History of Antiva, Volume IX_ ,' she said. 'You've read all of this? I could never get past the first chapter.'

'I did,' he said. He stepped closer to the bookshelves and ran his finger over the spines. He had, in fact, spent the greater part of his pay on his personal library. Some of the books on the left shelf came from requisitions through the Order. Not that many. The interest of a Knight-Captain in ancient Tevinter history was not something on which the Chantry cared to spend coin.

He wanted to explain those things to her. He couldn't justify the urge. Instead he kept his words to himself.

'Huh,' Hawke said. 'There's more to you than you let on, Knight-Captain.'

'How do you mean?' he asked, genuinely curious.

'I didn’t even think you would do anything else to a book besides burn it. You're not just the armed thug I thought you were at first.'

'Oh,' he said. 'That's a little painful, even from you.' But the faintest tendril of gladness sprouted and unfurled in his heart.

'I mean, when I first saw you, you were hitting that...'

'You bring this up every time, Hawke.'

'And well, you know, templars and mages. Lots of yelling, usually. "Go to the Circle!" "Kill that abomination!" "Don't turn into one!"'

He smiled despite himself. 'Am I so bad?'

Hawke shrugged. 'You're not completely horrid.'

He ran his hand through his hair. ‘Was there something you wanted to ask?’

‘I was wondering if you had access to the archives.’

‘Our library?’

She nodded.

‘What are you looking for?’

She stepped forward, a little closer to him. ‘Don’t you think Kirkwall’s a bit of an odd place? So many abominations. So many mages going off the rails and off on blood magic trips. I should know. I kill a lot of them.’

Cullen was silent for a while. ‘Yes,’ he said, finally. 'It is. And you do.'

‘Something’s not right,’ Hawke said. ‘In any case, I found these during my explorations. Perhaps you might know something about all this.’ She reached somewhere into the pack she carried and handed him an oilskin envelope, brushing the water off it.

He leafed through the contents. ‘Where did you find these?’ The treatises, stained and crumpled, were in an antiquated hand. ‘Streets made of glyphs? Sewers created to drain blood from slaves? Even for Tevinter, this is... unfathomable.’

‘You don’t think there’s a reason for all the madness? Demons, abominations? Kirkwall’s crammed full to the brim with them. Here, turn to the last sheet.’ She leaned closer, pointing at the words, her hand hovering close to his.

‘The Veil is thin here,’ she said. ‘There has to be a reason for that. All these demons being drawn through – it’s as though someone wanted to call them.’

He blanched. ‘Why would anyone want to do that?’ he asked. He shook his head.

‘The authors speak of information hidden in the templar archives,’ she said. ‘I thought perhaps you might be able to look into it, or let me take a look.’

Cullen thought of Meredith, pouring over her books and scrolls, half the library on her desk. ‘It might be difficult,’ he said.

Hawke's face fell visibly.

He sighed. 'I'll see what I can do.'

She straightened her back and went into what Cullen had come to recognise as her voice of  _I’m giving you a report I don’t want to give you but I suppose I don’t really have a choice_.

'Two apostates, thinking they could control innocent citizens. A bunch of weird Dalish muppets. A...'

'An apostate in Darktown,' Cullen interjected. 'Anders.'

'You knew?'

'I heard the rumours a while ago,' he said. 'But you didn't accost him. In fact, I heard he's been travelling with you. You didn't mention him.' He should have been angry at her. But there were things he himself did not mention to Meredith, not unless she asked, and she almost never bothered.

'You're supposed to let me finish my report before you nitpick it.'

He waited.

'He heals the poor, Cullen. Have you walked through Darktown?'

'Not often,' he admitted.

'But you remember, all too well,' she said. 'The stench of all those forgotten and abandoned, left to rot under the ground. The creaking of withering timbers that will one day fall and take half the people crawling there when they go. He makes the place his home to cure those who have nothing and offer him nothing. It seems a far greater crime to stop him.'

'I thought he was hiding from the Wardens,' Cullen said. He had to admit he didn't like the admiration in her voice when she spoke of the apostate, petty though it made him feel.  _You're the Knight-Captain, stop acting like a fool._

'You know that's not the only reason,' she said. She had dropped the arch look she normally wore around him. Today her gaze was level and clear. Steadfast.

Cullen realised he had been creasing the form in his hands back and forth until it was on the verge of ripping.

'He shames me with his selflessness,' she said. 'I know you don't think much of me, Cullen, but I...'

'I  _do,_ ' he said, and the heat in his own words shocked him. How could he possibly tell her he thought of her far more than he should? That he had pleaded with Meredith to let her retain her freedom outside the Circle not because he owed her a debt, but because he saw the good in her that she hid under all the flippancy.

Like a giant idiot, he had said it.

Hawke was looking up at him, her lips slightly parted, eyes wide. She stepped closer, closing the distance between them, crossing that unspeakable boundary. She was so near to him he could practically feel the warmth radiating off her. So near that he caught the unmistakable scent of lyrium, metallic, all-too-familiar. Desire surged in him, addling his senses. Whether it was for her, the lyrium or both, he could not say. For the first time in years, he felt something stir, unbidden, within him. A feeling he had thought buried and gone. The seed of something struggling for life.

Cullen stumbled back. He coughed, his throat thick. He put the form on his desk and straightened the crease out. 'I... thought you had an appointment elsewhere. I've kept you too long. I'm sorry.'

'Cullen,' Hawke started, but he guided her to the door, putting his hand against the small of her back. A wretched mistake, one that made him stammer as he bid her farewell. Hawke's face was nothing short of confused as she left him. No less confused than he had left himself.

 

 

Meredith had taken most of the treatises Cullen had in mind. Her interests seemed to lie in dwarven history, oddly. He didn't want to ask her why. People tended to avoid conversations with the Knight-Commander of late. She was quick to anger, and her tirades on the evils of magic were becoming worse. He didn't want to call down her ire on the Circle. Her reason seemed to teeter on the edge of a blade, barely balanced.

The books she had left held no information on the Band of Three, which surprised him not at all. He had never come across any mention of them. Instead, late after hours, the light flickered in his chambers as he studied the ancient history of Kirkwall, the foundations laid by Tevinter. There, yawning, fighting back the sleep and the dreams, he found what Hawke had been looking for.

Blood sacrifice. The harvest of slaves. Citations by historians about dark rituals. It was Tevinter, after all.

 

 

That night, he could tell she had dark hair, dark as Hawke’s. He knew which dream it would be from the way she touched him, fingers soft and tender, brushing his hair aside, kissing his forehead. Tonight they would be lovers, tonight she would tell him she was his.

‘You like me when I look like this,’ she whispered.

‘No,’ he said.

Her hand travelled low, down on his hip. ‘Yes,’ she breathed, low in his ear.

‘No,’ and his voice was a sob as she touched him.

‘Yes,’ she said, and he felt himself come alive, even though he was dead. Her hand clenched around him, moving rhythmically, pulsing, dragging white heat out of him.

‘No,’ he moaned.

‘But that is what _I_ say,’ she told him.

He saw the walls smeared with flesh, heard the screams of his companions, knew his turn would come. She hurt the others in front of him. She showed him what she would do if he didn’t comply, if he didn’t open the door, if he didn’t set her loose. Her laughter was a mockery of all that was holy and pure, and as she killed the last of his friends, she smiled at him with teeth that were long and sharp.

She touched him again with a slender finger, and before he could help it, no matter how hard he tried, he had her on her back, pushing her down into the mattress, lifting her knees and spreading her apart.

‘No,’ the demon said, laughing, as he forced his way into her.

And suddenly it was Hawke beneath him, her face frightened, though he had never seen her that way. ‘Cullen,’ she was saying, her fingers digging into his arms, and he couldn’t stop.

Then he was awake, shaking, sheets stained with sweat, alone again.

 


	7. oh, envy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘This is your idea of dating? Hunting blood mages with a lyrium addict? How very romantic.’ Varric was crotchety when he was going through his accounts. Isabela was reclining on a couch, flipping through a book with a lurid cover.
> 
> ‘Don’t judge me,’ Hawke said, raising her hands to the sky and looking pointedly at the tome Isabela held. ‘You wrote that.’

  **THE HANGED MAN**

 

 

‘This is your idea of dating? Hunting blood mages with a lyrium addict? How very romantic.’ Varric was crotchety when he was going through his accounts. Isabela was reclining on a couch, flipping through a book with a lurid cover.

‘Don’t judge me,’ Hawke said, raising her hands to the sky and looking pointedly at the tome Isabela held. ‘You wrote that.’

‘I’m not judging,’ Varric said, mirroring her upturned hands. ‘You should see my love life.’ He paused. ‘But I mean, it’s not the greatest idea you’ve ever had.’ 

‘Varric, you’re in love with a crossbow. When they say ‘get wood’, they don’t mean--’

‘ _Hawke,_ ’ the dwarf said. ‘You really are horrible. Drinks on you tonight, just for that.’ 

‘There's nothing to it, Varric,’ Hawke said. ‘We’re... friends.’

‘Okay,’ Varric said, his brow raising until Hawke punched him in the arm. ‘I’m sure you’ve got him wrapped around your little finger. Maybe I won’t have to keep buying the Order off wi... Anyway.’

‘What?’

‘Nothing. You ever consider maybe he’s into other boys? Or bigger men. That kind of thing. Bears. He could be the type.’

‘I can see it.’ Isabela dragged a hand theatrically over her brow.

Hawke hadn’t considered that.

From the corner, so quiet Hawke hadn’t noticed him, Fenris said. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘What’s this, Broody?’

‘I heard he was in love with a girl in Ferelden.’ Fenris paused. ‘A mage, when he was in the Circle.’

‘How do you know?’ Varric asked.

‘Guardsman Donnic talks a lot when he’s in his cups and down five silvers.’

‘Better not let Aveline hear that,’ Isabela said, laughing. ‘So, Hawke. He likes mages.’

‘He’s a templar. Of _course_ he likes mages.’ Varric rolled his eyes.

‘Ugh,’ Hawke said. ‘He’s not like... Never mind. Forget it.’

‘She might be related to you,’ the elf was saying. ‘An Amell.’ And suddenly Hawke felt her cheeks burn.

‘How does Donnic know the name of some random girl the Knight-Captain had a crush on when he was even more foetal than he is now?’ That was Varric again, exasperated with his bookkeeping. 

‘Because,’ Fenris said patiently, ‘she’s the Warden.’

 

***

 

The Warden, bloody saviour of all Ferelden. A woman of such exceptional calibre that she had become unofficial consort to the King while Hawke was scrabbling for coppers in the gutter. Fantastic. _Fantastic_.

Isabela had remarked, after picking her jaw up off the floor, when they were alone in the tavern, ‘Don’t be ridiculous. I’m sure he’s long over her. How long can a man possibly pine?’

In Cullen’s case, Hawke had the feeling the answer was _forever_.

Who cared? Plenty of fish out there. She gave him her reports and viewed it as an amusing little entertainment. Other things filled her spare time, like the prissy prince of Starkhaven who had recently shown up in Kirkwall. Chantry boys, damned be them all. Hawke considered an image of the uptight templar and pious prince wrapped up in each other's loins and suggested that Varric write her that novel.

He had thrown a quill at her head.

Instead she contented herself with teasing the prince, who seemed to have his own lusty past, one he was avidly trying to repress, to Hawke's amusement and Isabela's disgust. Both of them loved nothing more than to poke and prod at his buttons until he found some excuse to find a washroom somewhere, or flee back to the sanctuary of the Chantry, or an empty room, somewhere, anywhere.

Right now, she had found him lingering at the Chanter's Board in Hightown, looking over the postings, and was distracting herself quite acceptably.

'And?' Hawke wasn't really listening to anything Sebastian was saying. Instead, she was admiring the turn of his cheekbones and the elegance of his brow. She was not, however, admiring the Chantry babble, nor the passion he had when he spoke of Elthina and Starkhaven and so on ad nauseum.

Cullen had his Chantry moments too, but when you got past the initial templar drone about mages and Circles, it was obvious the man hated politics and subterfuge. Probably just as well, since he couldn't tell a lie to save his soul. No, the Knight-Captain, for all his aggravating faults, seemed actually concerned about the wards under his care, templars and mages alike, even if he didn't consider them _people_. She had thrown that line back in his face so many times now that he visibly flinched every time she said it, which only made her say it all the more.

Why was she thinking about him? Here stood a prince, or an exiled one. Certainly a step up from Knight-Captain of the bloody Kirkwall Templars, who fancied women with more accomplishments than Hawke, like saving the entire bloody world and stopping the Blight. Cullen had a type, and it was the type of woman who slew Old Gods, apparently.

Where could she find one to kill?

How did you kill one, exactly?

Sebastian was still talking about Starkhaven's glorious history. She sighed and tried to maintain her face of interest, when to the side she caught a glimpse of golden hair.

There was the very Knight-Captain in question, crossing his arms in his plate armour. Hawke could practically feel him frowning from across the square. She rolled her eyes. He had been a little more reserved after she had brought him her mother's gifts, a little more harried, a little harder to talk to. As though he had slipped back under the shell of courtesy.

Hawke contemplated adding ‘archdemon’ to her next report.

As Sebastian made another boring point about Chantry law, he laid his hand lightly on her arm, an action so natural to him that she knew he must have been an absolute terror to the young ladies of Starkhaven.

Instead of looking at the Starkhaven prince, she glanced at Cullen.

When he caught her looking at him, he turned immediately, rubbing the side of his neck.

‘Oh,’ Sebastian Vael said, who had followed her gaze to the Knight-Captain.

Hawke turned her attention back to Sebastian, but she had a feeling the prince wasn’t half as oblivious as he appeared, no matter how he made a show of hiding his worldly past.

‘ _Oh,_ ’ the prince said, with a slight, knowing nod at the young man standing on the steps, steadfastly avoiding them. 'That's an interesting look Ser Cullen gave you, Hawke.' 

And Hawke considered his statement.

 

 

**THE GALLOWS**

 

Isabela had insisted on tagging along the following morning, and Hawke hadn’t been able to dissuade her. It had almost been worth it to see how awkward the Knight-Captain turned in the face of their joint presence, and Isabela’s awful flirting. Hawke had noted he looked uncomfortable to the point of terror when Isabela leaned all the way over on his desk and blew him a kiss goodbye. Most men looked uncomfortable in a vastly different way.

She leaned back against the ferry rail as it pulled away from the Gallows, counted two beats, then turned around.

It was not the look she caught from the Knight-Captain, now out in the training yard, ostensibly yelling at his recruits. It was the quick flush of colour that rose in in his cheeks as he dropped his eyes and turned back to fussing with his sword.

'You look like the Ferelden that ate the dog that ate the cat that ate the canary,' Isabela said, poking her. 'What's got you so pleased with yourself? Ooh, I see it. You do know you're a mage, don't you?'

'Thanks,' Hawke said drily.

'Maybe he'll tie you up and spank you if you ask him nicely,' Isabela remarked. She cocked her head and regarded him for a second. 'No, never mind. Not that one.'

'Why?' Hawke asked, unable to stop herself, forgetting to deny her interest. It was a source of constant annoyance to her.

'Look at him,' the pirate said. 'He's a pleaser, that one.' She pointed down low at Hawke. 'Pleaser. What do you like about him, anyway? There's other pretty boys in Kirkwall, you know. I could find you a few. He's like a big, dumb puppy.'

'I like dogs,' Hawke said, and Isabela rolled her eyes.

‘I can get you a discount at the Blooming Rose,’ the pirate said.

‘ _I_ can get myself a discount at the Rose,’ Hawke snorted. ‘They owe me. I don’t like to pay for what I can get for free, anyway.’

‘Well, you’re going to get all crusty down there if you don’t _do_ something.’ Isabela grinned. 'You could buy a suit of Warden armour, play dress-up--'

Hawke heaved a long, deep sigh. ‘What are we killing today? Bandits? Blood mages? Oh, I know. _Pirates._ ’

 

 

'You spend a lot of time around the Knight-Captain,' Aveline remarked later, when Hawke dropped by her office in the Keep.

'That a felony?' Hawke asked, stretching her arms and yawning.

'Just an observation. I see you two talking by the docks a fair amount.' It was true. Cullen always stopped to ask about her day, if he saw her by the ferry on his way to and from the Gallows. Hawke just happened to pass by remarkably often. It was amazing how many errands could conspire to bring her that way.

'We're just talking,' Hawke said.

'Right,' Aveline said. 'So you like him, then.'

'We're friends.' It felt odd saying as much.

'Why don't you...' Aveline paused. 'I shouldn't be encouraging this.'

'Why not?' Hawke couldn't help asking.

'Come on,' the Guard-Captain said. 'If you have to ask, Hawke. Don't be stupid.'

 

**HAWKE**

 

Cullen was out of his armour again, wearing a linen tunic and breeches, sitting at his desk when Hawke entered. When he looked up and saw her, a small smile flashed over his face, an expression so open and light she wondered what he must have been like before the darkness of Kirkwall.

When he caught her eye, he looked to the side, the smile fading a little, though it still played at the corners of his mouth. For a moment he looked his age, a young man in his twenties, thrown into the madness and run through a wringer. The shadowed orbits of his eyes lifted into the light.

She wondered why he always seemed almost afraid of her. At first she had thought it the obvious reason. That she was an apostate. Then she had wondered if he was genuinely afraid of women. He hadn't seemed nervous at the ball, not until she had torn off her mask in a fit of pique, and he had seen it was her.  _Then_  she had made another guess. That, Hawke thought, was probably at least a little accurate, but there was more to his fear than that. She had grown a little better at reading him over the long months. He kept it locked away, but sometimes, when she caught him off-guard, she caught a glimpse of genuine... what? Fear? Suffering? Torment? There was something hidden inside, and Hawke itched to dig it out of him.

He coughed. 'It's not Tuesday.'

‘Don’t you get bored sitting here stuck behind your desk?’ Hawke eyed him. ‘You don’t build up those muscles of yours just to fill in requisition forms.’

Cullen fidgeted, put his pen down and looked up at her, leaning his elbow on his desk and his chin on his palm. ‘Duty demands,’ he said, then laughed ruefully, ‘but I suppose it can be rather dull.’

‘How about you un-dull yourself a little?’ She folded her arms and leaned forward on them. ‘I’m short on companionship today. I heard you might be good at dealing with blood mages.’ Would he come? He had been more withdrawn lately. The circles under his eyes had grown darker.

‘Ah...’

 ‘I got a tip-off. Hear there’s a... coven of them larking about in Darktown. It’s always Darktown, of course. Never anywhere nice like Hightown or a park somewhere.’

She watched him rub the side of his neck uncertainly. ‘I’ve got all this work to do,’ he said, sitting up and gesturing at the piles of paper on his desk. 'The Knight-Commander has been keeping me rather busy.'

‘Ah,’ she said. ‘I’ll just have to go on my own, I guess. I heard there were ten or more of them. It might be a little tricky, nothing I can’t--’

‘Hawke.’

‘Oh, say you’ll come, Knight-Captain. I need someone to carry all my lyrium.’

‘I... All right. If you’re going to be foolhardy enough to go on your own.’ He stood up. 'Someone needs to make sure your methods don't get out of hand.'

'Are you making... Was that a joke?'

'Not at all,' he said, but he seemed to be suppressing a smile.

'Well, gear up,' she said, 'you look half-naked without your skirts on.' She had the satisfaction of seeing the Knight-Captain of Kirkwall turn rather rosy about the face. 'Where's your tin-can armour, anyway?'

'Having some dents taken out of it,' he said. 'It's probably done.'

'Went into battle, did you?'

'If only,' he said ruefully. 'I took a little bit of a clout from a morningstar. On the training field.' His expression seemed wistful.

'So they keep you locked up inside? The irony.' She grinned. 'Keeping things in order... in the Order?'

He sighed. 'I seem to be unfortunately rather good at it. Besides, nobody else would do it properly.'

Hawke laughed. 'Come on, Knight-Captain. Let's get you all dolled up.'

'Ah... Really, I'm fine,' he tried, but she was already halfway to the door and crooking her finger at him to follow.

He raised an eyebrow. 'Do you even know where--'

'I visit the smithy all the time. His walls are plastered with templar armour. Hear he gives the Knight-Commander the best rates in town. Even better than mine.'

He sighed. 'All right.' He stood up from his desk and gathered the rest of his armour.

 

**CULLEN**

 

Hawke tormented him the whole way to Kirkwall without saying a word, by leaning back against the ferry railing with her elbows propped up on it, and looking at him with those bright eyes and that irrepressible half-smile of hers. She watched him until he finally fidgeted and coughed and went to the railing beside her, staring out over the grey sea.

He never liked the journey, not the roiling of the waves that made the bile rise in him, and he could still feel her gaze on him. He was too nauseated to tell her to stop.

When they reached dry land and he had regained some of his self-control, he said, 'I went through those notes you left me.’

She raised her head. 'About the Band of Three?'

Cullen shrugged. 'The fanciful prattling of drunkards?'

Hawke snorted. 'Close. I can't say I blame you for thinking that. I guess you didn't read the notes properly.'

'Actually, I did. Magical glyphs that do something that they never explain properly? I don't know, Hawke.'

She rolled her eyes. 'Bark all you want. You already bought in.'

It was true. ‘I did look into the archives. Meredith has most of the books requisitioned for her own use. There was no mention of any Band of Three in the tomes I could find. I did, however, find the history that they mentioned in your papers. Tevinter’s past was dark.’ He swallowed. ‘More than dark.’

‘When I took over the quarry,’ Hawke said, sounding slightly uncertain, ‘I found an inscription on one of the stelae. An account of how they would force slaves to push each other off the sides of the Bone Pit, as fodder for dragons, and a vile method of motivation.’

He shook his head. ‘Unimaginable cruelty.’ But the texts he had read hadn’t portrayed an impression any better. He had found texts that told of the blood grooves, the unending slave-sacrifices, all to feed some unknown evil.

‘They also mention the Veil being thin here, all around Kirkwall, no doubt because of these ancient practices,’ he said. 'As you noted.'

'It doesn't feel right,' Hawke said.

'What do you think to do about it?' he asked.

'Depends on what's down there.' She tossed her head and stretched. 'Old Gods, I hope.'

Cullen shot her a suspicious glance, and she raised her hands innocently.

 

 

**THE SMITHY**

 

'Maker, Cullen, move faster. Stop dawdling.'

'I'm not!'

Owen heard the commotion outside his smithy, and glanced up to see the young Knight-Captain, looking oddly-unclothed in a linen tunic and breeches, dragging half his platemail with him. He himself was being dragged around by one of Owen's steadiest sources of income. Hawke was the cause of the Knight-Captain's flustered state, by the way he kept stoically trying to avoid looking at her, and how he detached her hand from his arm politely, nervously.

Smithy Owen was uncertain of how to proceed. 'Er, Ser Cullen. Messere Hawke.' It was odd for the Knight-Captain to appear in person. He eyed the suit of armour spilling out from his pack.

'Did you damage the rest of your armour, ser?' he tried.

'No,' Cullen muttered. 'I came for the breastplate, that's all. Is it ready?'

'It is,' Owen declared, relieved that was all he wanted. The Knight-Commander had demanded some troubling requests of late, and she had expressly forbidden Owen to speak of any of them. He retrieved the breastplate for the Knight-Captain, who gave it a cursory look, nodded and allowed Owen to help him strap it on.

Hawke, watching, tipped her head to one side, getting a look that Owen had seen many times before and usually precluded trouble. She stepped closer and started on the straps of the Knight-Captain's armour. Owen noticed the young man start to turn a very uncomfortable red when her fingers brushed his nape.

'Hawke, you don't have to help,' he managed, and was ignored.

'You know, I haven't killed anything since morning,' she said. 'I'm getting aggravated from all this pacifism.'

'Are you pleased with the repair, ser?' asked Owen.

'Of course,' Cullen said, and added, 'The Order will take care of your payment, as always.' He yelped as Hawke tugged particularly hard on a strap.

'Why, I do believe I'm working for the Order now,' Hawke remarked. She crossed her arms. 'Owen, charge all my repairs to the Knight-Captain.'

'You're richer than the Order itself,' the templar protested.

'But we must do what is _right_ ,' Hawke said, in such a pious tone that Owen winced.

'Er,' he tried. 'If the Knight-Captain...'

'No,' Cullen said, grouchily.

Owen glanced at Hawke, whom he feared far more.

'I was just kidding,' she said, waving a hand. 'I'd feel bad taking alms from paupers. Are we done?' She was sprawled on a nearby bench, arms folded, sulking. Cullen had refused to let her go any lower than his waist, and Owen had finished arming him alone.

'We're done,' the Knight-Captain almost snapped. 'Your assistance is appreciated, Master Owen.'

As they left, Hawke drummed her knuckles on the back of the Knight-Captain's plate, to the young man's profound discomfort.

Owen watched them go, intrigued. Hawke was quite the destroyer of hearts. His nephew had been utterly taken with her when she was still just a weapon for hire, eking out a living in Lowtown. So had many of the young men and women of Kirkwall. Owen suddenly felt rather sorry for the Knight-Captain.

He considered how much gold both of them brought to his smithy each year, and decided nobody needed to hear his opinions on the matter.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter and the one after it are the two chapters that gave me the biggest headache, just like the one Hawke permanently gives Cullen. After the next chapter gets posted, the rest of it should be updated really quickly. Thanks for sticking with the story so far! Every kudos and comment makes me feel so warm and fuzzy inside!


	8. the longest journey

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘What if it is an Old God?’
> 
> Something flared in Hawke’s eyes. ‘Oh, I certainly hope so,’ she told him, and she started forward.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is the longest chapter, and after this things get shorter and (bitter)sweeter. Or you can skip ahead to... 
> 
> 'Cawkedance on the Coast, Next Chapter'.

**DARKTOWN**

 

**CULLEN**

 

'Oh Maker, Cullen, you're so _weak_.' A bolt of lightning shot around the corner and pinned the creature Cullen had been battling up against the wall.

Cullen drew a breath that was worn from frustration rather than any physical exertion. The last hour had consisted of Hawke poking fun of him for just about anything and everything, to the point where he was wondering why she had even asked him to come along.

'I had forgotten how _weak_ templars are. Smite harder, why don't you?' This time her blade lashed out and sliced off the limb of an abomination. Cullen finished it. She was already elsewhere, zipping around like a mad bee.

'Hawke, wait!'

'Come on,' she called.

She was driving him insane. But she always came back to him. Her blade and her bolts reached out constantly to stop anything that seemed too close to him. It took him a while to put a finger on the feeling that burgeoned in him. Safe. Under the circle of her protection, he felt safe.

'Where in Darktown is this 'coven', as you put it?' It seemed as though they had been walking through Darktown for hours.

'Just follow me. I've been down here far too many times.' Hawke beckoned to him from where she was standing.

Not so long ago, the thought of having a mage lead him down into the winding warrens would have made him immediately suspect a trap or worse. Possibly with good reason.

'They're all insane, you know. Not like you.' He was surprised to find himself saying it out loud.

Hawke turned to look up at him. 'Say what?'

'The apostates in this city.'

'I did notice,' Hawke said. 'City owes me a prize for that. Being the only sane mage in Kirkwall, I mean.'

'I've heard dark things about some of your companions,' Cullen remarked.

'If it comes down to that, I've heard dark things about some of yours.'

'You know what I need, Hawke. Names and proof.'

She rolled her eyes. 'How about a carefully placed lightning storm?'

He stared at her, tilting his head to the side.

'Just kidding. Mostly.'

From around the corner in front of them, he sensed the blast of magic before he saw it, and dragged her back behind him as she yelped.

'I had that handled,' she said, even as she detached herself from him and threw up a barrier.

'You're not getting yourself killed on my watch,' Cullen retorted.

Hawke turned to him briefly, looking surprised, but she was already making use of his judiciously-placed smite to draw her glowing blade across the mage's right arm, almost taking it clean off. As it cut, it cauterized.

'Just you, is it? Alright, let's have some words out of you.' She bent down, ignoring the scream that came from the man as she pushed down on his destroyed arm slightly.

Cullen winced.

She took advantage of his position to pull up his sleeve, checking his arm for cuts. ‘My, my, an apostate in Kirkwall who _isn’t_ a blood mage.’ She paused. ‘But does he still count as maleficarum? What does the Order say? Maybe we should just kill him. For the _people_.’ She glanced at Cullen sidewise and added, 'Not that he is one.'

Cullen opened his mouth to protest, but the man was already babbling.

'--won't tell you nothing,' he shrieked.

'Oh?' Hawke prodded at his arm again, right where the wound was raw, and was rewarded with a scream. 'Where's your merry band again, then? Missed that.'

He told her.

'Well, what do you want to do with him, Cullen?' Hawke stood up and put her foot on the mage's chest, popping her strange sword into view again. It blazed very close to the man's throat.

Cullen put his hand on her arm until she took the blade away, then unwound some rope from a stack of barrels and snapped it in his hands. 'He's not going anywhere in a hurry. We can collect him on the way back.'

'I just kill them,' Hawke said. 'It's so much easier.' She caught Cullen's look. 'I'm only kidding. You get my reports, you know what I do with them. I tell the Order to come and collect stragglers like a good little girl. Sometimes I don't think the Order bothers.' She gave him a pointed look.

'Sometimes they're not where you say they are, Hawke.'

She shrugged. 'There isn't enough rope in this city for all these idiots.'

Cullen raised an eyebrow.

‘I do useful things with _my_ time,’ Hawke said. ‘Do you see me summoning abominations and partaking in felonies? No. That’s because I don’t do them where people can see.’ She was waiting for a frown, and when she got one, she winked. ‘Only kidding. Look, I'll even fix his arm.'

Which she did, pressing her hand to the wound so it sealed over again after a few minutes. Cullen watched her, marvelling again at her rare gifts. She pulled her hand away, inspected her handiwork and shrugged. 'You can have him now.'

After he was done binding the mage, he had to deal with Hawke, who lounged lazily against the nearest wall.

'So, since we're down here anyway, I was wondering if you wanted to take a little detour.'

He raised the eyebrow again. 'This wouldn't happen to be something about a group of rogue mages, would it? Called the Band of Three?'

'Oh, _no,_ ' Hawke said, eyes theatrically-wide. 'But think about it, Cullen. If there was some kind of ancient well of evil weakening the veil between Kirkwall and eldritch powers, wouldn't it be part of your duty to stop it?'

Cullen heaved a deep sigh.

'Besides,' Hawke added, as though offended, 'they were _Seekers_ , not mere mages.'

 

The further down one went into Darktown, the colder it got. Cullen had never been so deep into the warrens before. Hawke seemed to have access to some peculiarly obscure routes, keys to doors that were locked. She gamely evaded all his questions about those, jingling her keyring as she let them through another rusted door.

Cullen tried to remember the way back, but Hawke had led him down so many twists, turns and hidden doorways that he prayed he didn't lose her down there. They were so far into the labyrinth he didn't think this was actually part of Darktown anymore. Strange, ancient remnants of pillars that resembled Tevinter work protruded from the tunnel floors.

It seemed as though they were nearing the real heart of the city. The brown wooden rot and filth of Darktown had metamorphosed gradually into obsidian columns that, like most of Kirkwall, sang of oppression, a giant graveyard of ancient stones. Here and there wood still patched over parts of the ground, forming dubious traverses over sinkholes and chasms too dark to see into. Passages for looters, perhaps, or something else. Cullen went first, testing the way in his heavy armour.

'You're not telling me you actually come down here by yourself?' he asked.

'No,' she said, tapping the back of his chestplate to get him to pick up his pace. Cullen had already been informed five times in the last hour that he had a tendency to slow down when he started asking questions. 'I've got you, see?'

'A choice that smacks of desperation,' he remarked drily.

'Nonsense. You were top of the list. Though I had some stellar candidates in line after you. I was just about to go and ask Bran Cavin if you turned down my offer.'

'Seneschal Bran?' Cullen laughed, and got the tap from Hawke again. 'I don't think the man ever leaves the Keep. I should send over all my paperwork. He actually seems to relish it.'

'Oh, but he's gorgeous,' Hawke remarked, and watched as Cullen fidgeted. 'Too bad he hates me.'

'I'm sure he doesn't,' Cullen said, but Hawke gave him a sceptical look, and he abandoned the platitudes. 'All right, he probably does. He told me off for giving him a headache by clanking too much.'

'I don't blame him. You sound like the tin pan alley,' she told him. Cullen had added padding to the plates of his armour to dampen the noise, but in the odd stillness of the passages under the city, he reverbrated. There was another noise, a low, rasping noise that made him put his hand on her arm and snuff out his torch. Hawke didn't need to be told to extinguish the light radiating from her staff.

'Hold on,' he said in a low voice. 'I hear something.'

'All I can hear is you,' Hawke muttered, but she fell silent and held her place, looking around dubiously.

It took a couple of moments to adjust to the overwhelming darkness, but finally Cullen could see a glimmer of light coming from a passage to their right.

Then the shadow of a long claw, reaching outward. He glanced at Hawke. Her face was actually perturbed. She glanced at his heavy, noisy plate, then slipped over to the other side of the corridor. Cullen saw her form the facial equivalent of a groan as she crept back to where he was.

'Varterral,' she hissed, in a tone that said _not again_. Her lips brushed his ear, and all at once, ludicrously, in the dank corridor with the creature that lay in wait for them, his blood thrilled to her touch.

He pushed the feeling back and tried to concentrate on the absurd situation they were in. He had done enough reading to have heard of the creature, but unsurprisingly, had never seen one. Trust Hawke to have encountered random hellish spider-things that no sane person would ever lay eyes upon, much less vanquish.

He reached for his sword. She held up a hand and scooted up ahead to get a better view.

Cullen heard a noise behind them and turned. That same rasping noise... He could barely see. Hawke looked back to see what he was looking at, squinting in the gloom. She made a face, beckoned him forward, raised her staff and pointed him to where the other varterral sounded like it stood behind them.

He edged forward so he was at her back, blocking her from the first varterral they had sighted. Hawke mumbled something under her breath that sounded suspiciously rude, and then she cast, sending a spray of rocks into the tunnel behind them, blocking the passage. There was an insectoid scream of frustration that set his teeth on edge.

'I'm sure I'll be able to fix this later,' she said, somehow managing to flash him a grin as she sprinted past, into the cavernous chamber that lay beyond. Cullen shouted her name, swore and rushed out to put himself between the beast and her, giving her space to cast whatever it was she was planning to cast.

Hawke had other ideas. 'Go,' she hissed, pointing vaguely in front of them, into the gloom.

'What?' he managed. She sent a little spark towards an exit he hadn't noticed, barely visible past an outcropping of broken pillars, and zapped him with a small bolt of static to get him moving as she ran towards it.

The varterral struck, a flailing rage of claws and spider-like legs, towering over them. Cullen slashed out with his sword, a sharp crack breaking through the chitin of the limb he hit.  Hawke didn't miss a beat, and sent a wave of fire to the spot where he had done the damage. The air was filled with the stench of burning flesh.

' _Go,_ ' she hissed, and he did. She sent out a storm of electricity behind them as they ran, pushing the great beast backward in a flailing rage of claws and thin, spider-like legs.

It was enough to get them into the narrow corridor.

She lit his torch with her staff. The corridor they were in seemed empty aside from the gloom and the branching paths. A clawed limb smashed into the interior wall of the corridor, and Hawke's face took on a particular look, the one she used when she was up to something.

She shocked it with a blast of electricity and watched the limb retract as an alien screech filled the air. 'I could do this all day,' she quipped.

Cullen sighed. ‘Let’s not.’

When the next strike came, he brought his sword cleaving down on it, and Hawke practically cackled as she sent another blast of fire out, making a comment about fried varterral drumsticks.

'Well! This is rather anticlimactic,' she remarked, standing and waiting for another strike, but the varterral had apparently given up. He could hear the angry chittering, retreating.

'It might be looking for another way around,' he pointed out, and then added, 'This is _insane_. Why are we here?'

Hawke had the grace to look embarrassed. 'It might not have panned out the way I was hoping,' she admitted.

'Might not have panned out?' He raised his hands skyward. 'We're at the bottom of Kirkwall, trapped behind this... giant... spider-demon, you blocked the passage behind us with a rockfall, and...'

'It'll be fine,' Hawke said, raising her palms to placate him. 'I'll kill it from inside here, if it makes you happier. You can just sit back and polish your sword, or whatever it is you templars do for fun.'

'That's not the point!'

'I'm offering to make things better,' she pointed out, as though he was the unreasonable one.

He persisted. ‘How am I supposed to look out for you if you don't care about looking out for yourself?’

A sly look crept over her face. ‘I didn’t know you cared.’

He hadn’t meant to say it like that. ‘I meant...’

‘Look out for me? Protect me from what? Angry templars trying to clap me in chains? Your fine self?’

'I'm only trying to help,' he said.

Perhaps something softened a little in her face.

‘Oh, don’t you worry,’ Hawke said, her voice light, though something about it sounded forced. ‘I’m going to live forever. Even if I have to die to do it.’ There was an edge to her voice when she said it, the faintest tint of sorrow.

He sighed.

'Sorry,' she said, to his shock. 'I just figured I could count on you.'

'You can,' he said, 'but I don't think this was the wisest...'

She squeezed past him, towards the passages ahead. As she passed him, she turned and said, 'I thought we made a pretty good team there,' and winked, and Cullen tried his best not to think about that.

'Besides,' her voice echoed down the hallway, 'I thought you were sick of paperwork.'

He didn't answer that. Instead, he said, 'What exactly are we looking for down here? I can hardly believe your Band of Three would still be lurking around down here. You said the etchings were old.'

'I don't think they're down here,' she said. 'I think whatever they were looking for is. I've been looking into this for a while, Cullen. All those keys I have, I've hunted for a long time.' His name sounded different when she said it.

'I hardly think a simple lock could stop the likes of you.'

She was eyeballing the fork in front of them, deliberating which one to take. 'The hard part is figuring out which doors need unlocking,' Hawke said, then made up her mind and took a right. 'Oh.'

He caught up to her as they stepped out into a large chamber, larger than the one that had housed the varterral. This chamber was lit by odd glowing rocks that punctuated obsidian pillars, seemingly reaching to an artificial sky. He listened, heard nothing.

'Constellations,' he said, looking up at the rocks, set as they were into patterns.

Hawke followed his gaze up. 'Ah, it's the dog one.'

'It's a wolf,' Cullen said automatically.

She glanced at him. 'What's that one to the right of it?'

'Peraquialus,' he said, without thinking, and felt suddenly awkward.

Hawke said nothing, but her eyes lingered on him for a second, as though finding something she hadn't expected.

'We should move on,' he said. 'To find whatever it is you think is down here, and then get back up to civilization.'

'If Kirkwall counts,' Hawke said, snorting.

Cullen laughed, and she raised an eyebrow.

'So,' he said, regaining his composure. 'What is it you're looking for again?'

'Are you going to get mad at me if I say I don't know exactly?'

'I already guessed that.' He surveyed the chamber. Tevinter architecture was not inviting. It was designed to intimidate, to heighten the sense of the viewer's inferiority. The walls of the man-made cavern towered over them. He wondered what the glowing rocks were. At first he had thought them lyrium, with the pulsing blue glow, but he felt no pull.

'Do keep your eyes peeled for crimson lakes and rivers of blood,' Hawke said. She wandered over to the far side, examining the walls, floors, everything in sight.

'Over here,' Cullen said, coming to a doorway shrouded in shadow. Hawke appeared at his side as he fumbled for an opening, a handle, anything that would get them moving. Though he had complained at her for the detour, he couldn't help being pulled along by her determination. That, and the genuine desire to stop whatever it was that was down in the bowels of the city.

Cullen had never visited a city anywhere near as large as Kirkwall, a city spilling over with refugees. He might have lived out his life in peace on Lake Calenhad, if the Circle had remained intact. The teeming humanity of Kirkwall and the Gallows had almost overwhelmed him at first.

Though his experience was limited, he didn't think there was something quite right about Kirkwall. He had gone through reports and histories of other cities that contained Circles, and none of them had ever had such problems with blood mages, abominations and demons. Theories about the Veil being thin? Ancient evil lurking beneath the surface of Kirkwall? Those were not long leaps to make. Even Meredith had once mentioned the Veil being strangely weak in the city, though she had promptly followed her remark by imposing further sanctions on  mages. It was a wonder she had ever agreed to let Hawke roam around the city.

Better a rabid dog on a leash than one nipping at your heels, she had said. He wasn't sure how he felt about that. Hawke was an undeniably powerful mage, that was certain, and possibly too much trouble for the Knight-Commander to tame -- but there was something about the way Meredith had said it that made him wonder about her motivations.

Hawke ran her hands over the slab that seemed door-like, and scrunched her face up in disgust. 'I'm not letting a piece of rock stop me.' She lifted her staff.

'Wait, wait!' Cullen said. 'You might bring this whole thing crashing down on us.'

Hawke paused. 'Hmm,' she said. 'You might have a point.' She tapped thoughtfully on the stone with a finger.

Then they both froze.

Chittering echoed through the chamber. Cullen peered through the false starlight that surrounded them and saw nothing. Hawke reached out suddenly and squeezed his hand, an awkward clank against his gauntlet.

'Don't be afraid, Knight-Captain,' she said. 'I'll keep you safe.' And she winked again.

Cullen was glad for the gloom that hid the colour in his cheeks. 'To the corridor,' he said, wasting no time. 'We can hold it that way--'

Claws and fangs that dripped noxious toxin reared out of the dim light. He barely evaded the first strike.

'Cast!' he said, though she hardly needed telling. He heard her practically screaming something about _spiders again_ , but in front of them a wall of fire went up. How did she have so many spells at her beck and call? He hadn't even seen her take any lyrium yet.

He took up the rear as always, cutting back anything that came close to her. He lost count of the number of creatures he cut down, the pile of horrid, twisted limbs growing near his feet as Hawke pushed her flaming barrier further ahead, redoubling the flames.

Now he saw her grab a vial of lyrium and imbibe it, flinging the glass aside. She sent more flames shooting outward, a storm of electricity, bolts of ice. And he thought, _maybe she will live forever._ In legend, in lore, immortal.

'Just keep them off me,' she yelled above the crackling energy.

'I know,' he shouted. 'Keep moving.' How many damned spiders were there?

A spray of bile hit them both, sizzling on his plate and causing Hawke to yelp. Whether more from rage or pain, he didn't know. Judging by the renewed vigour of her assault, he assumed the former.

'Cullen, move,' she shouted. She sent streaks of lightning arcing in front of her. He saw her throw another empty vial onto the ground. There was something about the challenge in her eyes, the sheer joy of the fight. She was a warrior, built for the battlefield.

He cut a swathe back to the corridor. Was the horde letting up? He couldn't tell. Spider after spider came, and his sword arm was beginning to tire. He was bashing away at them with his shield as Hawke came running past him, walls of ice and fire holding back the tide of legs and claws and poison.

Then they were back in the confines of the narrow passage. Hawke blocked it with rubble, the same trick she had used before.

'Alright,' she said. 'Next.'

He drew a breath. 'You are...' A jumble of words he could never say.

'I'm not insane,' she said.

'That's not what I was going to say,' he told her. She looked at him quizzically.

He sighed. 'I never thought you cared so much about making things...  right.'

'You wound me, Cullen. That's _all_ I care about.' She said it as though she didn't mean it.

'You _care_ , Hawke. You're going soft,' he said, smiling at her. To his surprise, she looked away as though his gaze made her uncomfortable.

'Should've let Wilcrud kick your ass that day,' she muttered.

He clapped her on the back. 'We should go,' he said.

'Go back? When we made it all the way down here?'

'No, to wherever this leads.' He motioned at the passage that they hadn't taken. 'I don't plan on ever coming back here again after today.'

'At least you know where all Kirkwall's spiders are coming from.' Hawke trotted up the passage, happy as a lamb, running her hands all over the inscriptions on the walls.

'You are...' He shook his head, reviewing the way she had fought the varterrals. 'Your power grows by the day.'

'I'm out here every single day,' she told him. 'At first I had to rely on it just to stay alive. Now it's a dance. I'm good at it. Do anything enough, you'll get better.' She raised one finger, brought a flame forth, made it coil back and forth.

He should fear her. He should have felt that instinctive need to smite. Instead he watched as she traced a pattern in the air. Her symbol. The colours of the rainbow cycled in her flame.

'Is magic beautiful?' she asked, her voice for once free of the droll edge it normally had.

He was not ready to answer that question.

She stepped closer to him, and for one brief moment, he thought she might kiss him, and did not feel the old fear, did not step away.

Instead she took his hand and placed the flame on it. He felt nothing. The flame had no heat.

'It doesn't have to hurt,' she said, and she closed his fingers around it. Almost he pulled away, and yet he drew a breath, held his hand there. _She is not the enemy._

Why she said those words, he couldn't tell. What she knew about him, he didn't know. The Warden was her cousin. Did they talk? That question he did not want answered.

When he opened his hand, the flame was gone.

'I won't hurt you, Knight-Captain,' she said, and some of the slyness returned. The moment passed. Cullen would return to it later, in the lonely silence of his mind, wondering.

For now, he looked at her. There was a fatigue she could not hide. 'What's wrong?'

‘I need lyrium,’ she said, and held out her hand.

‘That’s the last thing you need.’ Cullen handed her a vial anyway, even if his hand wavered when he gave it to her.

'How much do you have left?'

'A couple of vials,' he said. 'If all we're going to be fighting are bugs, I won't need it.'

'What if I become possessed and you have to oppress me?'

He sighed. 'I wouldn't be down here in the first place if I thought that was likely.'

'Not that you could,' Hawke had to point out. 'Give me what you have.’

‘Did you ask me down here just so...’ He gave up and handed her three more vials, the Knight-Captain’s allotment. There was one more, tucked under his belt so it hung down on a cord, the way he had been taught to safeguard it as a recruit. That one always stayed with him.

‘I told you. I needed someone to carry my lyrium supplies,’ Hawke said. ‘You are really good at this.’

He turned to her, his face filled with concern. ‘Hawke, you reek of it. You should be careful. You’ll push yourself too far.’

‘I’m fine,’ she said. ‘You take it too.’

He made a noise she couldn’t quite interpret. ‘The amount you take, you must be addicted to it.’

‘I can quit any time I want,’ she said.

Cullen laughed bitterly. ‘I've seen what withdrawal can do to a man. I had a friend in the Order whom Meredith threw out on the streets for... violating Order precepts.’

Hawke blinked. ‘The greasy drunk by the docks?’

‘His name is Samson.’ When he said the name, his voice was quiet.

‘Is that why he’s like that?’ she asked.

‘Partly,’ he said. The cravings. That was another part of the torture he had undergone in Kinloch Hold. The deep withdrawal, the lyrium curled around the very fabric of his being, refusing to release him. As it dissipated and separated from his nerves, it tore at him, clinging to what felt like the very pinpoint roots of his flesh.

‘I burn it up,’ she said. ‘Not myself.’

‘How bad are the headaches when you don’t take it?’ he asked, eyeing her steadily.

In answer, she sighed deeply. 'It's not the same for us.’

He didn’t press her. ‘I shouldn’t be asking where you get your lyrium supplies from, should I.’

Hawke glanced at him quickly, but saw the half-smile on his face, and relaxed.

‘Probably not,’ she said. ‘Would it help if I told you the Chantry gives me a special stipend just for being a wonderful, upstanding citizen?’

‘...Do they?’ He raised an eyebrow, surprised.

‘Of course not.’ She laughed, but the laugh faded. Her face grew pensive.

'Do you remember Keran?' she asked. 'The kid I saved from the blood mage cage.'

'I never forgot him. He's doing well. You did both him and the Order a favour.' _And me_.

'Tarohne was the mage I killed to free him.'

Cullen blinked. 'That was a while ago. Why do you bring it up?'

'She wanted to turn your recruits into abominations, remember? Corrupt the ranks?'

 _Remember._ As though he could do elsewise. He remembered Hawke saying that the mages imprisoning Keran had spoken of resurrecting the Tevinter Imperium.

'She left some books around Kirkwall. Books that I recently found. Lucky me.'

She told him how each book had spawned demons and abominations and been generally a pain in the ass to deal with.

'You think this is connected to whatever it is that the Band of Three sought.'

'Most likely,' she said. 'I killed the demon she was trying to summon.' She said these things so matter-of-factly. It astounded him every time.

'Wait. When?'

'Just this week,' she said. 'Yesterday, in fact.'

He hated to ask. 'What type of demon?'

'Desire,' Hawke said. 'An ancient one, at that.'

He hoped she hadn't seen him flinch.

'More powerful than the ones they were trying to implant your recruits with.'

He shuddered at the memory.

'Really ancient,' she added. 'I haven't encountered anything like it before. If you read the notes about those Seekers, they mention this creature as being so old it's really something other than a mere demon.'

She paused. 'Not that it stopped me from killing it, of course.'

Another pause. 'There are others.'

'Four known in total,' said Cullen, who _had_ read her notes. 'They called them the Forbidden Ones. And you think there's one of those down here.'

'Possibly,' she said. 'Or something even older.'

In the later parts of the Band's texts the name had begun to shift. The last mention of the Forbidden Ones referred instead to a being called the Forgotten One. Something that lived under Kirkwall, that might have stayed sealed away for centuries, leaking evil into the city. Polluting. Corrupting. Biding.

'And you still want to go.'

'One of the books mentioned these creatures, said they gave the Tevinter magisters the first rites of blood magic. So if there's something down there to stop, well. It's our _duty_ ,' Hawke said.

She stretched like a cat, arching her back, and Cullen suddenly found a patch of dirt in the opposite direction strangely fascinating.

‘This way,’ she said, pointing.

‘How do you know?’

‘See a cave once, seen them all.’ She tapped her head. ‘It’s not just good-looking in here.’

He sighed.

'We're probably under the Keep now,' she said. Cullen was horribly lost.

'How _do_ you know?' he asked.

'Blood magic,' Hawke replied promptly, and watched him flinch. 'Just kidding.'

'You shouldn't joke about that,' he said.

'It helps to take the fear away,' Hawke said, shrugging. 'What I don't fear, I can kill.'

'I don't think fear would stop you from killing anything,' he said, believing.

'Oh, I don't know. I've never yet killed an archdemon. Or a god.' She stopped at the next turning.

'What is it?' He peered over her shoulder, struggling to see by the light of her staff.

She moved the light lower. 'There,' she said.

Cullen followed her finger to dark grooves in the walls, grooves that drained into deep holes in the sides of the path. She lifted the light a little higher. The stains came from the ceiling, had solidified like candle drippings down the sides. Blood, old and thick.

‘Maker, it’s really true,’ he said, shaking his head in disbelief. ‘You do manage to get into the worst spots.’

Hawke shot him a scathing look. ‘Welcome to my life,’ she told him. ‘I _told_ you. It’s like you don’t pay attention to my reports. I don’t know why you bother.’

He felt uneasy. Something was dreadfully wrong. He hadn’t taken that much lyrium that morning, and Hawke had pilfered what he had brought with him, but he could feel it. A strange eldritch thrum, voices that sounded distant, whispers that sounded vaguely Tevene but ancient. A year ago, he would have fled from the darkness. He stood there with her and took a breath, forcing his nerves flat.

Hawke pressed her lips together. She felt it too, by the way she looked around. He put his hand on her arm. ‘Look, we can go back. You should call your companions to help. I can order a squad.’

‘I’m not leaving when we’re this close,’ she said, her brow resolute. ‘You can head back up, if you like.’ She shrugged his hand off and stepped closer to the walls, inspecting the ghastly bloodstains.

Cullen sighed. He couldn’t leave her down here on her own, however powerful she was. ‘Hawke...’

‘I can’t let whatever is down here get away,’ she said. ‘It knows we’re here. I can feel it.’

That was not encouraging at all.

‘What if it _is_ an Old God?’

Something flared in Hawke’s eyes. ‘Oh, I certainly hope so,’ she told him, and she started forward.

Cullen followed her. The blood appeared old, stagnant and clotted, and for that he was grateful. The walls were thick with it. Looking down the corridor, it stretched as far as he could see from the light of Hawke's staff. He wondered how many innocent lives had been taken to produce all that blood, wondered how powerful such a ritual must have been.

Wondered how long evil could tarry, deep in the bowels beneath the city.

Hope stirred in him. Perhaps they could change the course of Kirkwall's future. Perhaps there was an end to the constant flow of abominations. The city was broken to the point that even templars had fallen to demonic possession.

Hawke's voice interrupted his thoughts. 'I think it's here, somewhere. Whatever it is.'

'What do you sense?' He could still feel the thrum, but not anything more specific.

She stared around her, as though her eyes could pierce the darkness.

'The same type of essence I felt from the other demon. Forbidden One. But _other_.'

'Over here,' Cullen said, catching sight of a carven image, streaked over by blood.

Hawke burned the blood away with her staff, and shone the light on it.

They looked at the engraving together. The marks were crude, for all of Tevinter's glorious history. Still, it was clear what they portrayed; slaves, bound in winding lines, travelling through the tunnels that Hawke and Cullen now stood in.

'Oh, Tevinter. Always so predictable,' Hawke said, though her usual flippancy was slightly lacking. She moved down the passage and came to another engraving. He followed her, his heart heavy.

'Blood grooves,' he said.

In the worn lines before them, the line of slaves flowed into chambers much like the one Hawke and Cullen had fought the varterral in. They had been in too much of a rush to pay much notice, but in the image before them the chamber's purpose came clear. Tevinter did not waste time with sacrificial altars. The unfortunates who were sent to those rooms were slain at the sides of the chambers, throats slit as they knelt over the channels that carried the blood down to unknown depths. In the centre of the chamber a pyre burned.

'Fenris was right,' Hawke muttered. 'Tevinter's the worst.'

'By the gods,' Cullen breathed.

It was the next etching that had Cullen pressing his hand to his head, a diagram of what lay beneath them. The chambers bled down through a complex network of passages, like the one they stood in, and the channels at the sides of the passages continued down into the heart of this ancient web of tunnels.

In the very centre of the web two figures had been drawn. The first knelt, and Cullen knew what it was by the twisted horns and whip-like tail, knew too well. He tamped down the fear only because Hawke had already mentioned the demon she had battled.  Though he feared it, he was prepared. He kept his heart still.

The kneeling demon looked up like a supplicant, towards the second figure. Cullen could barely make out a humanoid outline. The bulk of the icon had been gouged out of the stone.

A chill crept over him.

'I think we should go back,' he said.

He could tell she was equally unsettled, but something in her chin tightened.

'I just want to scout ahead a little.'

Cullen inhaled very slowly before letting his breath rush out of him in frustration. How did one go about convincing one of the most powerful beings in Kirkwall to turn about and march back home?

One did not. Hawke was already marching down the corridor, to his profound dread.

The air turned cold and stale as they went further down. He had no idea how deep they were. 

Hawke's chatter had ceased, and her grip was tight around her staff. Cullen noted these changes in her bearing. His own hand went to the hilt of his sword. What lay at the end of the corridors? He had already seen the diagrams. He expected no less.

 _Desire._ Strange, that he was not afraid. He had not encountered a demon such as _her_ since that day in Kinloch Hold. Hawke, upon bringing Keran home, had been the first to mention that insidious creature. He had heard no other reports of them since.

The chill had come from the thing the desire demon knelt before. Hawke's Forgotten One. Was it a god? An ancient magister? An unspeakable evil? Cullen had no idea. All were possible. None filled him with joy.

That blood mages sought to return the Imperium's grasp to Kirkwall was unthinkable. He would not let that happen.

'The fourth is called the Formless One,' Hawke said. He remembered the name from the texts she had given him. No mention of it in any of the archives, at least not the ones Meredith had left untouched.

'You've not come across anything of the sort before?' he asked. 'Just ordinary demons?' As though demons could ever be anything but extraordinary.

'Ahh, you know. I run into a lot of things. I'm not sure what normal is anymore. You know my demon-killing count. Kirkwall is the worst for demons. Almost as though they dance merrily through the Veil. Like a big old demon party.'

A sense came over him then, despite the way she had phrased it. That all Thedas, the very world, teetered on a knife's edge over the brink. That the Veil might break at any moment and all the creatures in it be loosed upon the world. He was one of the few people who had survived a taste of it, after all. The chamber in Kinloch Hold would be a trite precursor to the ravages to follow.

And now it was not Hawke alone who wanted to press forward, to find the Veil, to see if it would indeed hold.

He could feel it. Despite his low lyrium reserves, the low sursurrus of voices and the insistent press of _other_ \-- spirits, demons, name them what one would -- grew almost overwhelming.

_This is duty._

He walked on, though the corridor felt almost dream-like, and Hawke, in front of him, seemed almost ghostly at the edges.

 _If there is a demon, remember what is real._ He had given the recruits that rule, though part of him felt a fraud when he said it.

_Pain is real. Hold on to it. It will be your safeguard._

 

**HAWKE**

 

When they came to the next graven image, Hawke sighed. An image of a great spider-like creature adorned this rectangle, rising over the city.

'This looks promising,' she said, watching him frown.

'What do you think this is?' he asked. 'The descriptions of the Forgotten Ones are vague. I could barely find anything on them. I certainly don't remember reading a thing about giant spiders.'

'Could just be graffiti,' she said, provoking a frown from him.

She examined his profile as he regarded the carvings in front of them. 'You're rather popular amongst Kirkwall's society ladies, you know.'

Propelled into the upper echelons of Kirkwall’s society, she had heard countless noblewomen condescend to her, caught snide little remarks here and there. They did not care for Hawke, who sat at formal dinners with a bored look on her face and a tongue that was far too sharp. She played with her cutlery and listened to them titter about the things they would love to do to the stuffy, gorgeous Knight-Captain. What they would have him do to them.

Cullen let out a long, drawn-out breath, though it was unclear whether at the comment or at the inappropriate timing of it.

'No?'

' _No_ ,' he said.

Hawke raised an eyebrow. 'Not a single one?'

He avoided her gaze. 'I'm no noble. I've nothing in common with any of them.'

'Lady Hennesley said you were _gorgeous_ ,' she informed him. 'She said she wanted to tie you up in ribbons and--'

'Sweet Maker! I don't wish to know what Lady Whatever said. You know how I feel about that whole...' he waved his hand vaguely, agitated, 'that whole game. It sickens me. I detest every minute of those damned functions. More wealth than half the city concentrated in one room, and they stand around primping.'

'You'd rather be down here chasing demons in the gutters of Kirkwall?'

'It's at least productive,' Cullen said, still sounding put-out. 'In theory,' he conceded.

'It's a _noble_ cause,' Hawke said, expecting him to groan. Instead, the dour press of his lips and the knot in his brow wavered, and though he seemed to be trying to suppress it, a laugh that was half a snort leaked out.

After regaining his composure, he said, 'You're a noble now.'

'Still a dirty apostate,' Hawke said, and immediately regretted it.

Cullen's expression folded up into the visage of The Knight-Captain. The banter died there. 'We should press on,' he said. 'I've been away from my post far too long.'

'The Gallows won't fall apart without you there for an afternoon,' Hawke said.

Cullen just gave her a level, weary look.

 

 

Down, down and deeper into the darkness they went. She couldn't shake the sense that something was watching them. The mind playing tricks, she told herself. She wondered where the hordes of demons she had expected were. Another trick? Or an old memory abandoned? Keepers waiting through the silence of centuries.

She hoped to hell she could find the way back. If only Bethany had been there. But Hawke had pored over all the old maps, bought secret tomes and scrolls and spent more time than any of her companions ever suspected, piecing together the numinous depths of Kirkwall. She had enough faith in her bearings.

'Why is this so important to you?' Cullen asked, close by. Hawke pondered the low rumble of his voice as he tried to keep it quiet and it resounded in her ears.

Sometimes she forgot Cullen was a man, buried under all that armour, and when she was reminded, a strange thrill always shot through her. When he stood next to her and she realised the solidity of him. It made her want to peel off the rest of his gear. Ah, she had liked the feel of him, pressed against her at the masquerade, furious as she'd been. She wanted to climb atop him and feel him pressed under her thighs, see him looking up at her. Wanted to hear him scream her name the way he had just a while ago.

Clearly the appropriate suggestion to make to the Knight-Captain of Kirkwall’s templars. He had been asking her something. She brought herself back to the question.

'I have to _know_ ,' Hawke said. 'And if I know, I can stop it. I can stop everything. And I will.'

He was silent for a while after that, so quiet Hawke turned to look at him suspiciously.

Eventually, he said, 'You could be living a life of luxury, instead of running around here in the dark.'

'I could,' she agreed, 'and I could also bore myself to death with my embroidery needles.'

He ignored the pun. 'Is that why you do this? You don't need money, not anymore.'

Even in the dim light, she could make out the infuriatingly attractive turn of his cheekbones, and it made her glib and flippant.

'Why, Cullen, it's almost as though you expect me to have some depth or purpose. You wound me.'

'Well, I--' He paused. 'Why did you ask me to come with you? You have your companions.'

Hawke only shrugged. 'I wanted to.' Her reasons were tucked away in a tidy little corner.

'That's no--'

'My turn to ask a question,' she said. 'Why did you agree to come down here with me?'

He blinked at her. 'D--'

'If you say _duty,_ ' Hawke said, 'I'll blast you down a blood groove.'

Cullen was silent.

She didn't know if she was ready for his answer either. Instead she let him off the hook by laughing. 'General nosiness, _Knight-Captain_.'

He choked, indignant. 'I'm... what?'

'And there I thought your hearing was half-decent.'

'I'm not nosy.'

'You wanted to come down here every bit as much as I did,' she said. 'You want to know the truth of it all. You sit in your room and read treatises on Antivan history and dream of constellations. Who knew the Knight-Captain of Kirkwall was such an enormous nerd?’

Cullen’s face closed up like a book.

‘I’m not making fun of you,’ Hawke said, looking at him. ‘I think it’s… sweet.’

He flushed. They moved on.

 

Finally Hawke stopped, staring at the massive door that had put an end to their seemingly-interminable walk. Behind, Cullen almost crashed into her.

'How much more lyrium do you have?' he asked.

'Two vials,' she said. She studied the look of concern on his face. 'Look, when I run out, we'll head back. I'm not insane.'

'What would you do if you didn't have it?'

'Run away and come back another day,' she said. 'What do you do without it?'

'Hit things with my sword,' he said. 'I'm fairly pragmatic.'

'Useful,' Hawke said brightly.

'What do you do without it?'

'Hit things with my templar,' she told him.

He made a sound of exasperation.

‘Here,’ she announced. In front of them the door rose, twice Cullen’s height, grim obsidian. She riffled through her notes. ‘According to these, I’m supposed to align these round locks…’

She examined the wall and saw the blue lyrium outlines in it. The glyphs had been scribbled faintly in the backs and margins of Tarohne's books. She had committed them to memory, drawing them in the air with her finger.

She was already spinning the dials as she spoke, rotating them to match the positions she had marked.

‘What if there’s a trap?’ Cullen asked, dubiously.

‘Lose a hand, no big deal.’ She laughed at the look on his face before turning back to the door.

The chamber was filled with silence aside from the faint clicks as Hawke adjusted the ancient locks.

'Last one,' Hawke said, and Cullen gritted his teeth next to her.

The tumblers clicked into place.

The door opened.

All at once, Hawke felt the world dissolve around her. Mist rose at her feet, covering the stones she stood on.

This old trick, she told herself, and stood her ground while the very world shivered and collapsed around her. Not a horde of demons, then. Just the one, the one that shifted through an infinite cycle of inchoate figures, everything twisted and bent just that little, warped enough that something looked wrong.

The demon that was formless suddenly had a form, and it was that of Hawke's own face. A perfect copy now. She  had lost track of Cullen, though he had been standing right at her side. For some reason, he was no longer there, and it seemed absolutely normal.

Her own hand reached out to her.

'I offer you what you crave the most,' the demon said. 'Your sister, home with you. Your brother, alive.'

Hawke stood, silent for a moment. How many demons had she put paid to? Enough.

She spoke before it could say any more. 'Carver is dead,' she said. 'What is it they say? At peace. And he'll bloody well stay that way.' She drew her strange blade from the air, her staff in her other hand, and swung her blade straight out. The Formless One sideslipped.

The world shifted.

'The templar,' the demon said with a wicked smile, and suddenly it was Cullen standing in front of her. Hawke blinked. Instinct made her slow her blade.

'You are beautiful,' he said, coming closer to her, so close she wanted to reach out and--

The very idea of Cullen ever saying something like that made her snort, though for a second her pulse had risen, and the skin below her neck had adopted an interesting heat that she hoped the real Cullen hadn't noticed. 'You are the worst demon ever.'

 _Cast_ , and she did. She flung out her arm and bright fire flew forward.

The illusion dissolved. Cullen was shaking her arm, eyes wide.

'Hawke,' he was saying. 'Come back.'

'It's me,' she said, swinging her staff out in front of her. 'I'm me. I'm real.'

'I know,' he said. He was staring at the demon, and she wondered what he saw. He looked at it the same way she looked at varterrals. _This again._ His lips tightened resolutely.

'Eyes on me, mage,' the demon breathed. 'I can give you everything you desire.'

'Get out of my head,' Hawke told it.

'Or I can take him from you,' the demon hissed, and a long, clawed hand stretched out across the distance, angled towards Cullen.

She was at his side, dancing out in front of him.

'You'll have to go through me.' Hawke slammed the end of her staff into the ground and sent a pale blue wave of energy rippling outwards.

Hissing in rage, the illusion dissolved into an amorphous blot, then coalesced into a collection of grasping limbs. Human, elven, dwarven -- Hawke did not recognise the rest of them, radiating out from a central spoke on the Formless One's spine. At least twenty limbs reached for her. Some had scales, others feathers, one was flayed, all clutched at the air.

There was something not quite like a face sprouting from the neck of the nightmare, and Hawke tried not to focus on that eyeless horror.

It spoke to Hawke again, or tried to. It opened a mouth that was like no mouth Hawke had ever seen, and then blood, green and sickly, poured from a gash that had appeared in the creature's torso.

A blade pierced the demon from behind. That sword she knew, a simple longsword kept immaculate by its owner. Cullen went nowhere without it. Behind, she saw him twist his blade, forcing his weight against it. The demon screamed.

Hawke maintained the pressure from her spell, holding the creature in place. She quaffed another vial of lyrium. Killing demons had become so routine, so _boring_. She almost sighed as she brought her blade down to bear on it. With Cullen holding it in place, it was even easier.

What sort of demon was it? Desire, she had assumed, but there was something not quite right about it, Hawke mused as she struck the killing blow. There was always some part of her that mourned the loss of such an old, powerful being, a creature that had lived through centuries, endured the passing of time.

The mists thinned as though a squall swept them away. She tried to clear her mind of the fog that always clouded any encounter with the Fade. When she looked up, Cullen, sword still in his hand, was looking down at her with an expression that took her a while to place. Respect. Admiration. Something else.

‘What?’ she said, feeling uncomfortable under the scrutiny.

‘I’ve seen countless mages succumb,’ he said.

‘You have so little faith in me,’ she told him.

He laughed shortly. ‘That couldn’t be further from the truth.’

She glanced at his sword, cocked an eyebrow. ‘You were ready.’

‘Of course,’ he said.

‘You were going to kill me. If I turned.'

He nodded unhappily, the set of his jaw determined. ‘You wouldn’t have been you.’

Hawke placed her hand on his arm. ‘I like that about you,’ she said, and his lips parted in surprise. ‘Like I said, Cullen. You’re an asshole to everyone alike.’ She grinned so he knew it was a joke, but he didn’t laugh. His eyes were intent on her, filled with something she didn't know how to read.

She paused. ‘Just like a Harrowing, right? Big templar standing around waiting to cut my head off while I battle demons in the Fade.’ She didn’t wait for his response, watching him shift uncomfortably.

‘If it is, I’ve passed a billion Harrowings,’ she told him. ‘How many demons am I up to now?’

‘Almost a hundred,’ he said, his eyes lifting skyward. ‘Um. Ninety-three.’

'Ninety-three Harrowings,' Hawke mused. 'I think I should get a bye. Or at least a handwave.'

'You get that and more,' he remarked. He put the sword away. 'What did it promise you?' he asked, to her relief. He hadn’t seen. So she hoped. Or he was more subtle than she thought.

'An empty dream,' Hawke said simply. 'My brother, back from the dead. The usual.' She paused. 'What did it show you?'

He went very quiet. 'The usual.'

'The usual,' she repeated. 'You didn't bat an eyelash.'

'As I said,' he told her. 'The usual.'

There was a tale that needed telling, Hawke noted, but she was weary. The journey had taken a toll on her, despite the braggadocio she wore for Cullen's benefit.

As though mere fatigue had ever stopped her.

'One last lyrium vial,' she told him. 'One more door.'

He seemed hesitant, but she added, 'Come on, Cullen. We rid ourselves of that... multi-armed demon thing. I thought we were rather good together.'

'Hawke,' he began, but sighed. 'You don't know the meaning of restraint.'

'Not when it comes to this,' she said. 'We're so close. I can handle it.'

'You don't have your companions with you. You only have one vial of lyrium left. You have no idea what's behind that door.'

'I have you,' Hawke said, lightly. 'You seem to be surprisingly good at this demon thing.'

He stood there with his arms folded, frowning.

'Something follows us,' he said. 'I heard movement.'

'Spiders,' she said with a shrug. 'They're everywhere, I swear.'

'One day, Hawke,' he said, 'you'll break something you can't fix.'

She reached into her pocket and removed a folded-up piece of parchment, ending the discussion. The key to what lay ahead.

'Like I said,' she told him. 'You can head back.' Though she sounded careless, she wasn't sure if she had the conviction to follow through if he really did leave her there. She couldn't imagine him making his way up to the surface on his own, deprived of lyrium and exhausted, all because of her. What she knew was that he would never leave her down in the darkness alone. Never walk away.

She started forward.

With a deep sigh, he followed after her.

The air was dank and old. The passageway widened unexpectedly and merged into the floor of a massive cavern, and one side of their passage dropped off into a deep chasm below, too dark to see into. Hawke tossed a coin into it, and whistled when she heard nothing. She peered into the gloom a little too long for Cullen's liking, and he steered her back to the relative safety of the wall, firmly.

The carvings here were illegible, old beyond comprehension, scratched and worn away until they were barely discernible. The path they stood on was narrow, and they came to the end of it where another gargantuan door loomed. Cullen glared at Hawke and shook his head in disapproval.

'You don't think this is too convenient, do you? I mean, if there's something locked away down here, surely they'd have done a better job of guarding it.'

'Cullen, they left that... Formless-whatever thing down there. I just so happen to be remarkably good at getting rid of old rubbish.'

'It still seems too convenient,' he said.

'Well, like all demons,' Hawke said, 'the ones that really want to, always seem to make it back from beyond the Fade. If it wants to come back, let it. I'll deal with it again.' She turned her attention to the door in front of them.

She flicked through the dials, seeing nothing untoward, still in possession of all her hands. Four dials left, three, and she spun the second-to-last.

The world lurched beneath her feet. She saw, briefly, a pale face, sharp ears, a bitter smile. She stumbled as the blast hit them, and she went careening off towards the edge, falling into the void.

 

A hand, gloved with the bright light of polished steel, flashed in the darkness and caught her. Hawke found herself being dragged away from the darkness, into the flatness of metal and the grooves of Chantry insignia.

His arms were tight around her, his face wearing a mix of relief and horror. Hawke stared down into the chasm below her feet as he set her back on high, sturdy ground. The black slate yawned away into a dark nothingness. How far she would have fallen, she didn’t know. No spells she knew could make her float.

_Need to talk to the witch about that dragon spell._

‘So we’re even now,’ she murmured. Cullen still had his arms around her. Steel and lyrium lingered on him, wafted through her nostrils, merged with a warm scent that was uniquely his. She thought he might lean forward and kiss her, so intense the gaze in his eyes.

Cullen let go of her with a start.

'We should go back,' he said in the no-nonsense tone he adopted whenever he was being The Knight-Captain. 'You could have... You almost...'

'Like I said.' Hawke shrugged. 'We're even.'

'I think I still owe you a few,' Cullen said, uncertainly. He hadn't stepped away, to her surprise. He was still breathing hard. 

‘Right. I’m your knight in shining armour.’ She thought he would sigh or rub his neck or roll his eyes.

Instead he reached out his hand slowly until his fingertips brushed the side of her face, sending a shiver through her. Gauntleted or no, his touch was gentle. The light from her staff caught the transparency of his irises, turning warm amber to gold, his gaze transfixed on her.

Hawke slid her eyes over the planes of his face, the stubborn dappling of stubble that seemed a permanent fixture. She was suddenly acutely conscious of his physical presence, the masculine angles of his jaw, the scent of his body, so near to her own. Above all, his regard, fixed on her as though she was the only thing in his world.

His eyelids lowered as he looked at her, his lips softened and parted, his face tilted down. His eyes darted back and forth across her features.

She brought her fingers up to touch his face in wonder, to smooth her fingers over the corner of his lip.

Cullen’s eyes jerked wide-open.

'We should go,' he said, and stepped past her, starting up the long way back, bumping into her in his haste.

Annoyed, Hawke glared at his retreating back.

She was quiet on the way back, her thoughts glum.

What had she expected to find in the depths? Tevinter mages camping out, brooking pacts with ancient demons, breaking bread with elder gods? Instead all she had was dust and rubble. No passage left, a door that lay unreachable. All that work, reduced to nothing. Change the world, save the ones you love, live forever.

Cullen reached out awkwardly and squeezed her shoulder. 'Are you alright?' he asked. Somehow it was what she needed to hear.

‘I don’t know,’ she said, letting the breath flow out of her. If she could let all the tension go with that breath, if only, flowing down into the earth and the channels of the ocean and out. If she could be free when she sat up, walk away from the pressures and the demands and the deaths that happened all around her.

But there would be tomorrow, and blood, and more.

'It was a beautiful dream,' she said. She drew a breath. 'The longest shot.' Fix the Veil, stop the possessions, halt the neverending flow of abominations.

‘What stopped us?’

She shook her head. ‘I don’t know.’ She paused. ‘I saw something out there. A… person.’ A glimpse of pale ears barely visible under a dark hood, barely-illuminated by the light of her staff.

‘A demon?’

‘No,’ she said, slowly. ‘I don’t think so.’ She heaved a sigh. ‘Whatever it was, it stopped us. That avalanche was no coincidence. We were so close.’ She hit the wall with the side of her fist. ‘I could have made the city right. I'm always...’ She searched for the words. 'I always arrive too late. What do I change?'

‘It doesn’t have to end here,’ Cullen said evenly. ‘We’ll come back. I’ll talk to the Knight-Commander.’

Hawke sighed.

 

 

**THE GALLOWS**

**CULLEN**

 

'Report,' Meredith said, not looking up from the scroll she was writing on.

He told her his concerns about the Veil, about the heart of Kirkwall's madness, what Hawke and he had found.

To which the Knight-Commander shook her head. 'A cavern that collapsed after you? An entrance that will never be opened again? You ask the Chantry to believe fables, Cullen.'

'I witnessed this,' he said. 'These things were there.'

'And what do you suggest?'

'The Circle is in grave danger if it remains here,' he said.

'Where do you propose it should go?'

That he hadn't been able to figure out completely. The other Circles were filled to bursting point, after Starkhaven's crisis. 'Temporary camps, anything. The further from the city's interior, the better.'

'No,' Meredith said abruptly. 'There's no way we could maintain order in a camp of that size. We're undermanned as it is.'

‘We should rally our troops,’ Cullen said, ‘we could arrange construction to level the— ’

Meredith cut him off. ‘Our troops? You of all people should know how thin the Order is spread. Pull them back from their duties and do what, exactly? If the place is as hard to breach as you say, it would cost us too much. The barrier is weak? Then we will watch the mages. _I_ will watch them.'

Cullen floundered for a counter-argument, but Meredith shook her head. ‘No more on the Veil,’ she said. ‘Handle the mages of Kirkwall, and the Veil ceases to be a problem.’

‘But…’

She looked at him. She reached into a drawer. She pressed a gaudily-printed card on the table in front of him.

‘I believe your presence is required at the Keep tonight,’ she said. ‘Do keep our funding coming, won’t you? Knight-Captain.’

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It was so difficult finishing this chapter. I've gone really blind to it, so any suggestions are greatly appreciated! I will probably have to return to it and fix it up at some point. 
> 
> I almost abandoned the entire fic because of struggling with this whole section a few times, actually. I can't tell you how much time I spent googling 'forbidden ones dragon age' 'forgotten ones dragon age' 'formless one dragon age' 'band of three' 'fml dragon age'.  
> Anyway, I apologise for the immense block of text. I thought about splitting it up but decided against it for reasons of flow. Makes it easier to skip anyway :)
> 
> There are certain themes I was trying to get across in this chapter (well, kind of the entire story). 
> 
> Cullen's growth and ability to deal with all that he's been through. In a sense, he's the perfect companion for a mission involving demonic possession.
> 
> Hawke's constant struggle to be more than what she originally is. Hawke's continuing (self-perceived) failure to effect any kind of real change. 
> 
> Uh, well, you know, I'll just let Shepard sum it up for me. 'We have no choice but to try. For our insatiable curiosity, for our fear in what should happen if we don't.' (from the N7 day final speech trailer)
> 
> Thank you so much for sticking with this, even through this painful chapter. As always, I am grateful for all the amazing comments and kudos. It certainly made me get this finished a lot faster. :) PLAIN SAILING FROM HERE ON (mostly. sort of. hahaha. I'm so sorry :D).


	9. the young knight-captain gives a dancing lesson

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cullen tried not to notice that she was pressed up against him in her leathers. 
> 
> ‘Why are you always at those balls, anyway? You looked absurdly miserable last time I saw you there. I danced with you out of sheer pity.'
> 
> There was no evading her question. ‘The Knight-Commander thinks it a good thing for the Order to mingle with the nobility. For... support.’
> 
> Hawke started to laugh. ‘She sends you out there as bait?’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Cullen is convinced he can friendzone himself.
> 
> In the next chapter he will be proven utterly, horribly, wrong. I swear.

 

**CULLEN**

 

He wondered when he had first found himself weighting his days by proximity to her Tuesday visits. The irony of it; the mage, free to roam. The templar, locked in his office, chained to paperwork.

He found himself dreaming, one night, of earth crashing down on his face, drowning in soil and the weight of stones far beneath the city, and a slim hand catching him, pulling him up until he breached the surface. And he breathed, the air rushing back into his lungs, telling him he lived. And he looked, and Hawke smiled, and he woke for the first time in years without a scream half-formed on his lips.

But in the dark chasm beneath Kirkwall it was she who had almost fallen. He had almost lost her, and the thought of it was a new hurt, one that threatened to push away the old, paling shadows.

He could lie in the darkness and dream of the softness of her hair and her skin and the scent of her, pressed close to him, teetering by the edge of the ancient depths.

He could live with that. He could ask for nothing more. For if he broke, if his resolve faltered, what was he? Nothing but a pile of empty promises and weak flesh.

 

**THE YOUNG KNIGHT-CAPTAIN GIVES A DANCING LESSON**

The following week, Hawke and the young Knight-Captain were out on the coast, hunting down another tip Hawke had heard, and having found nothing, were leaning against a pair of boulders, surveying the coast. The conversation that day was a little strained, for Cullen was thinking about something Meredith had said. Something seemed off in her manner lately. She was growing more extreme in word and deed.

Next to him, Hawke heaved a sigh and flopped her head back dramatically against her boulder.

Cullen looked over at her.

‘You look perturbed,’ he said. Indeed, Hawke’s brows were knotted together.

‘There are a lot of trappings that come with a title,’ she said. ‘I’m supposed to learn how to waltz.’ He had the feeling it wasn't the real reason behind her mood.

‘It’s not that hard,’ Cullen said without thinking.

‘And the Knight-Captain knows a thing or two about dancing?’ Hawke prodded his arm with her finger.

‘Er,’ he said.

‘So he should show me,’ Hawke said, letting her arms fall to her sides.

Although it was a terrible idea, and he had no idea what madness possessed him to do so, Cullen extended a hand to her. He put his other hand on her waist, embarrassed. He had danced reluctantly with enough partners that he could go through the motions on autopilot, and yet he felt gauche and stupid around her. _We are friends_ , he told himself. _Nothing more_. Then he considered all the impossibilities of his statement.

Things were changing between them. The original awkwardness had been eroded by time, settling into the camaraderie of compatriots. Warriors fighting for the same goals. They debated, fought, argued, but Hawke always left him with a smile on her face and a lightness in her gait. Days when they simply talked, when they were just two sides of the same coin. A man, a woman, and he could not deny that which pulsed between them, hanging in the air like a calamity waiting to be loosed.

‘Oh,’ Hawke said, when he took her in hand, and didn’t elaborate.

‘Like this,’ he said, trying hard not to meet her scrutiny, and showed her the steps. She was a fast learner. She knew her footwork, no doubt from running around earning the dwarf’s preferred nickname for her. Cullen had heard him call her _Killer_ a few times now.

‘You know what you’re doing,’ Hawke remarked. Cullen tried not to notice that she was pressed up against him in her leathers. ‘Why are you always at those balls, anyway? You looked absurdly miserable last time I saw you there. I danced with you out of sheer pity.’

There was no evading her question. ‘The Knight-Commander thinks it a good thing for the Order to mingle with the nobility. For... support.’

Hawke started to laugh. ‘She sends you out there as bait?’

‘I...’ Cullen groaned. There was no denying it.

‘I would bite,’ Hawke said, nudging him with her shoulder. ‘So tell me, Ser Cullen. How does the dance end?’ And she stepped a little closer to him.

He held his hand steady at the back of her waist, though flustered, and tipped her gracefully backward with a flourish.

‘Like that,’ and his voice was low as he lifted her back upright.

She was almost laughing again. ‘I won’t remember any of this. Who knew the Knight-Captain would be my dancing master?’

He still had her hand in his, and before he could stop himself, he found himself bringing it to his lips, pressing them against the back of her hand, his eyelids closing. Hawke let out a startled breath.

He dropped her hand. There was a hint of colour in her cheeks, which she recovered from remarkably rapidly.

She made no move to step away from him. Instead she looked up at him, her eyes unreadable.

‘Is that how it ends?’ she asked. ‘With all the ladies?’ There was a question behind the question. Behind that, another.

‘No, I...’ he started, and he was the one with the burning cheeks. He coughed, cleared his throat. ‘I’m sorry. I should... I should get back to--’

Hawke caught his hand and pulled him towards her. Quick as wildfire, she leaned forward and kissed him, and the warmth spread all through him. When he found his senses, reeling, she was standing a little way back, hands on her hips, eyes unreadable. The sun began to dip against the horizon.

‘Hmm,’ was all she said as he burned.

He should keep his mouth shut. He should... He said, blurting the words out like a fool, ‘Is that how it ends? With all the gentlemen?’ _Not that I am one._

‘Don’t be stupid,’ Hawke said. 'Come on, Cullen. Let's go home.'

**Isabela and Hawke**

 

Hawke saw Cullen to his ferry. He had tried to insist on walking her to her door, as he always did when they were out together, but she had started tallying the number of times she had saved him from death.

‘No chasms here for me to fall into,’ she had pointed out, and he had raised his hands and given up. They did not kiss. They were not lovers. But as he stood alone on the ferry, he leaned out over the rail despite his seasickness and balanced his chin on his elbow, watching her until he was out of sight.

‘Disgusting,’ Isabela said, appearing from the shadows. ‘Really, Hawke. Disgusting.’

Hawke flashed her a toothy grin. ‘No idea what you’re on about. Don’t tell Varric. Or anyone.’

‘No-one would bloody well believe it.’ The pirate patted a barrel and seated herself on the one next to it, drawing one knee up and propping her chin on it. ‘I’m a better rogue than Varric, you know. He just shoots his bloody crossbow. Me, I’m good at... observing.’

‘Nothing’s happening,’ Hawke said. ‘At least, nothing that would satisfy you.’

Isabela rolled her eyes. ‘I know.’

‘Are you spying on me?’

‘No,’ Isabela said, huffing. ‘I know because you haven’t told me about it with that breathy bosomy look you get when you talk about how you two aren’t banging and you absolutely can’t stand him.’

‘Just don’t tell my mother,’ Hawke said. The thought made her shudder.

‘Speaking of which,’ Isabela said, ‘how are you liking being all posh and so forth? Like going to balls now, do we? Hanging around with our new suitors in Hightown?’

'I'd run away if I could,' Hawke said drily. 'Not a chance, though. My mother would kill me.'

'With what? Harsh language?' Isabela snorted. 'She couldn't hurt a fly. Whatever killing instinct _you_ got didn't come from her.'

'Oh, I don't know,' Hawke said, hopping up onto a nearby windowsill. 'She could fell a giant with guilt. Have you ever read her letters? She'd write me to death.'

A curious look came over the pirate's face. 'You don't ever wish you could just... up and run? Live your own life? Not somebody else's?' Her voice was strangely serious.

Hawke glanced at her. 'Of course,' she said. 'Doesn't everyone?'

'I mean, you could,' Isabela said. 'You're filthy rich.'

'So are you,' Hawke retorted. 'That expedition made us all richer than sin. Varric doled out more than a fair share to...'

'I know,' Isabela said softly. The customary twinkle in her eye was oddly dull.

'Well, why are you still here?' Hawke rolled her eyes and pulled her knees into her chin. 'Don't tell me you're here just because of your dear, sweet friends.'

Isabela looked embarrassed, to Hawke's surprise. She shrugged and looked down. 'Don't make me say it.'

After a second, Hawke laughed. 'Unbelievable. You, having feelings?'

'That's it,' the pirate said. 'I'm going to hunt down your pretty little Knight-Captain and ride him until he’s blind. He won't even remember your name tomorrow.'

Hawke thought about it.

'You know what?' she said. 'Go right ahead. He needs to loosen up, anyway. Virgins are so tedious.'

Isabela laughed, and Hawke joined her, the odd moment broken.

‘Seriously, Hawke?’

‘Yes?’

‘It’s been _years._ Every time I see the two of you mooning over each other, I want to throw up. Do something about it, for shit’s sake. He’ll only be a virgin once.’ Isabela winked.

Though Hawke walked away in a huff, Isabela’s words kept circulating in her head.

 

**CULLEN**

 

That night the Knight-Captain found no comfort in sleep. Instead he twisted and turned in his bed until he let out a groan. He thirsted, he hungered, he desired her more than he had ever wanted anything.  _O Maker, preserve._

That night the Knight-Captain burned.

He recited the Chant of Light at least five times more before he finally found an hour of quasi-slumber, though his sleep was plagued with nightmares, all of which wore her face. In his dark dreams he held her, felt her lips against his own, slid his hands over her. The clasps of her armour fell away into nothing, and he took what he would until the screams inevitably came. Not his. He cared nothing for his own hurt. But her voice, her sobs, her agony.

So he woke, coated in shame, breath coalescing into mist under the cold moonlight.

The memories came, and he remembered. And the dream became the nightmare, night after night, every night for the last two years since Kinloch Hold, scourging him inside out with shame. The same broken, battered thing, a mess of a man.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically, I think Varric's nickname for purpleHawke is 'Chuckles', but since Solas gets this nickname in DA:I, I just gave Hawke the 'Killer' moniker. It suits her better anyway.
> 
> Thanks for enduring this slow burn! :)


	10. how we fall

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ‘Hawke, we can’t.’

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Oh, dear.

**CULLEN**

 

When she slipped into his office the next day, shutting the door behind her, he could not meet her eyes. He stuttered and fumbled and dropped his quill at least a dozen times. He rubbed his neck practically raw.

Hawke. Hawke noticed everything. Her eyes, when he looked up periodically, were always on him, following. She kept that smile on her mouth the whole time. That mouth had kissed him.

Hawke, Cullen decided, was the worst idea he had ever had.

‘That’s all I’ve got for you today,’ she was saying. All business, aside from the look she kept tormenting him with.

He wanted her to stay. He wanted her out of his office. He wanted... He stopped the thought.

‘I have a lot of things on my plate.’ He stood up, hoping to usher her towards the door.

She remained sitting where she was.

‘Hawke… what is it you want from me?’

‘Cold, hard cash,’ she said. ‘Nothing more.’ The words were lies. She just smiled and flashed her white teeth at him.

‘You don’t… You don’t come here just to help the Order out,’ he said. Again, rubbing at his temples, not quite able to meet her gaze. 'I mean, the Knight-Commander has no hold over you, not now. I didn't think you would...'

‘I don't give a damn about the Knight-Commander,’ Hawke said. She paused and looked at him. ‘You know why I come here. I know you feel the same way.’

He shook his head. ‘We can’t.’ He stood up, thinking to open the door and lead her out of his office.

She shrugged. She leaned forward so he caught a glimpse of soft flesh beneath her odd armour, and he could feel himself reddening. ‘Why not?’

‘You know why,’ he said, forcing the words out. ‘Hawke, this is insane. You’re in the Gallows. If Meredith…’

‘She doesn’t come out of her office,’ Hawke said. She threw the breastplate of her armour off, loosened the front of her bodice, slipped out of her breeches. Before he could stop her, she pushed all the papers off his desk, to his horror, and was sitting in the space she had unceremoniously cleared, her legs on either side of him. He looked away, flushing, but his heart beat madly against his breast.

‘Hawke, we  _can_ _’t.’_

 _‘We can’t,’_  she said, echoing his words. ‘We can’t be  _friends_.’

Her hands slipped under the edge of his plate, briefly hesitating at the vial of lyrium hidden there, pushing the templar robes aside. He couldn't think. The feel of her and the scent of her and the sight of her rooted him to the spot.

Then her hands were on the fasteners of his trousers, and she was dragging them down, dragging him down to her. She kissed him, soft lips pressed to his, and he felt it stir, that spark of life within his loins. How hard he was already, hard for the first time outside his nightmares, all those long years of denial. How much he wanted her. How much he needed her. Her hand moved over him, teasing, encouraging. She had kicked her smallclothes off somehow, that last little barrier between them, and her legs were spread and open.

Cullen looked down and almost lost control right there. He tried to stop, pushed his hands against her shoulders, but somehow he was gripping her and she was pulling him in, wrapping her legs around him. Her face was flushed, her lips parted. Her knees jerked. He was buried inside her. The heat and pressure of her body surrounding his was unbearable. Unimaginable _._

_This is wrong. Not this way, desperate and furtive._

But there were no visions, no bad dreams, no claws to rend his flesh, and he wanted so badly to be healed. Oh, how he longed for something that was pure and good and real, to blow all the cobwebs and horrors away. Her fingers tangled in his hair and she gasped his name, and he was lost.

He pushed her down against his desk, couldn’t stop his hips from thrusting into her while she bit down on her fingers to stop herself from moaning. He kissed her with a ferocity he had never dreamt of allowing himself to feel before. It was all unwinding inside him, that tight coil of bound desire.

She whispered his name. She kissed him back. She locked her heels around him, drawing him deeper inside her, wet and willing and unimaginably soft, all-encompassing. He couldn’t think. She felt almost too tight to take him, and suddenly she let out a soft whimper, gripping his tunic. Had he wrung that sound from her? He almost froze, terrified he was hurting her, but she ground her hips against his, matching the rhythm of his thrusts. No nightmares, no demons, just his body inside hers, and for a moment he felt... whole. Redeemed. Repaired.

How close they were. How tender her fingers, now curled against his scalp, her other hand pressed to his cheek. His name on her lips. Her lips on his. He took her hand off his cheek, kissed her knuckles. He locked his fingers in hers, crushed her hand with the force of his desperation.

His own voice was saying something. Something he was about to regret. ‘Hawke, I love…’

‘What?’ She flinched beneath him, pulled her lips away from his mouth. Her face was startled. The dream shattered into splinters.

He had been horribly, terribly wrong. But it was already too late, he had said it, and worse still, he couldn’t hold himself any longer. His body betrayed him. As it always had. He came inside her, hard, as she gasped, flooding her body with a violent rush of guilt and shame.

In a moment it was over, and he was humiliated.

Hawke looked at him, surprised, as he pulled away from her, fumbling with his clothes. ‘You…’ Her words trailed off. ‘Are you… Was that really your first time?’ She pulled her legs together.

‘This isn’t what I wanted,’ he stammered, turning his face away. The aftermath was shameful and sticky, a wet pool forming on his desk as a dire reminder of how weak he’d been.

He felt so empty. Her face, when he’d blurted out those unfortunate words, words he hadn’t even admitted to himself before this moment.

‘Hawke, I…’

‘You said you loved me,’ she said, stumbling a bit over the words as she reached for her scattered garments.

‘It doesn’t matter,’ he said, voice dull. ‘I shouldn’t have said… I thought… I was wrong.’

‘I didn’t think--’ she started.

Worse and worse. ‘So you just… used me? That’s what you thought I wanted? Just a funny little diversion, to see if you could? Because it was  _forbidden?_ ’

‘No, that’s not what I meant,’ she said. One of her hands reached out to him. A moment before, before the dream had crumbled, he had gripped that hand as though there was nothing else in the world, no mages and no templars and nothing between them.

‘Did you ever even care, even a little?’ he asked, and his heart was in the words as they came out, stumbling and disjointed.

She stood as though frozen.

‘I think you should go,’ he told her.

Hawke, for once, didn’t argue. She pulled at her clothes and smoothed the fabric down, avoiding his gaze.

‘Cullen?’ she asked, hesitating in the doorway. He didn't want her to speak.

He looked at her without replying.

‘If I had been in the Circle, would you have…’

‘No,’ he said. ‘Never.’

‘I…’

‘Hawke, please. Just go.’

For once, she obeyed.

For the rest of the afternoon, he re-organised the mess of papers she had flipped onto the floor, trying to restrain the pounding in his chest with banal organisation. The chessboard had cracked. He picked up the pieces, tried to fit them back together, threw them away with a tired sigh.

He could smell her fragrance. No matter how hard he scrubbed his desk, she lingered, and with the utmost shame he found himself reaching down, to try and clear her from his mind.

It didn’t help.

For all that he'd made a pretense of pushing her away, he hadn't. Because he did love her. And he was a fool.

 

**  
HAWKE**

 

A week gave Hawke far more time than she wanted to reflect on what she had done. Or rather, what she had made the Knight-Captain do.

When it came to matters of affection, Hawke wasn’t always the most observant, but Cullen had become so painful in his stammering and blushing and furtive glances that it had become dreadfully obvious the man had eyes for her. What choice did that leave her, really? Plus, the thought of sleeping with the enemy, was, as she had once told Isabela, a challenge.

If she were forced to admit it to herself, the sight of him had always made her blood stir. Tall, attractive, unbelievably serious -– the latter trait being something Hawke liked to poke and prod at until he squirmed. It had been her favourite game for quite some time.

Until she had screwed it up, of course.

What kind of idiot declared his love when they had barely gotten to know each other?

What kind of idiot spread her legs for the Knight-Captain when she was an apostate?  _Why yes, Knight-Captain, smite me harder._

And  _then_  – what if she had told him what he had seemed to want to hear?

A lie, Hawke told herself. I don’t love him. I  _don_ _’t_.

Hawke found any number of reasons to keep busier than normal that week, and still, at night, sleeping in her empty bed when her own hands seemed cold comfort, she couldn’t stop thinking about him.

***

'You did  _what?'_   Isabela gawped, for once completely blindsided. They were in her room at the Hanged Man.

'Oh, for... Lower your voice,' Hawke snapped.

'You actually managed to get the uptight ass to give you a jolly old rogering?'

'In those words,' Hawke said drily.

The pirate eyed her friend. ‘I didn’t actually think you’d do it. I’m impressed,' she said. The customary slyness crept back into her eyes. 'Well? How was he?'

A shrug. 'You know.'

'I've never slept with a templar before. Do tell.'

'Well, virgins. You know.'

Isabela made a face. 'A good one or a bad one?'

Hawke said absolutely nothing, though she felt her face turn an interesting colour.

'Oh, you are in so much shit,' the pirate said. 'You are absolutely and completely fucked.' She laughed. 'Literally, of course.'

'Well, except that I think he hates me.'

'Sometimes you do say the stupidest things.'

'He... said he loved me.' The thought of it still made Hawke almost as fidgety as the Knight-Captain in question. The look on his face when she'd shattered his illusions. The way it made her feel.

I  _don't._  She repeated the words silently.

'Yes, plenty of men do that when their cock is stuffed six feet up your sopping wet cunt,' Isabela remarked. 'What's the problem? Seems par for the course, really. Mind you, he's a templar  _and_  a complete prude, so he probably meant it. Poor,  _poor_  templar.'

'I'm not sure your descriptions are lurid enough. I haven't thrown up once in the last five minutes. You're losing your touch.'

'Don't sidetrack me, Hawke.'

'I don't love him.'

Isabela started to laugh again. 'Is that so? Who cares? Just get him to fuck you again. Virgins get better with a helping hand, you know.'

She paused. ‘Now I can turn Anders into Justice anytime I want. Just four little words. Or is it five?  _Hawke fucked the Knight-Captain._ I can’t wait to test this out next time we fight a dragon.’

'Talking to you was a stupid idea,' Hawke said huffily. 'And the problem is he doesn't want to fuck me again.'

'Oh, don't be absurd. Ooh, I think you like him a lot more than you're letting on. I think that’s what’s getting your knickers in a twist. He might be the one man in this rotten city who might actually have a shot at breaking your cold, dark heart.'

'Is that the time? My, my.'

As Hawke stormed her way out, Isabela called, 'You're way too uptight. You need to pay the Knight-Captain another visit. Pay him some lip service. If you get down on your knees like a good girl, he'll come around. Maybe over. Or do I mean under?'

Her laughter echoed all the way down the stairs, to Hawke's extreme annoyance.

 

***

 

Hawke framed the problem in her mind.

Having just seduced the Knight-Captain of the Templar Order of Kirkwall against his better instincts, should Hawke, upstanding apostate citizen, return to his office in the Gallows and try and patch up the giant hole she had created?

It sounded even worse in her head.

If she had been hoping that he might contact her before that, she was wrong. She slept poorly that week.

If she were honest, it hadn't been the greatest sexual experience of her life, and yet... She had been wondering how he would feel for months, and the mere thought of the stretch of him entering her brought her to her release. He had been hesitant, looking down at her, speechless, his face a mix of emotions she couldn’t place. She gave him a rhythm, rolling her hips against him, and then he was moving in her and with her, his breath coming hard and hot against her cheek as he bent over her. There was wonder in his eyes, a sense beyond desire, his hand tangling in her hair, his mouth finding hers.

She couldn't stop thinking about the surge of his body against her, within her, the devotion in his eyes as he looked at her, as though she was the only thing in his world. There had always been something earnest and sweet about the golden-haired Knight-Captain of the Gallows, even under all the instilled pomposity templars tended to have.

Oh, he had not been fucking her. She was a fool. It was not fucking. It was...

Hawke scoffed. There had been nothing of love in her life to date, even from those who'd said it to her. Funny, then, that she kept replaying the way he had said it to her, desperate and ragged and raw. The way he had held her, stroked her skin as though she was something precious.

She had let him spend in her, felt him fill her with his seed, something she never did. She was clever at making men spill elsewhere, hated the intimacy of that final act. He had finished too fast. She hadn't been expecting it. She would have made him pull out, used her hands or her mouth or...  _Bullshit, Hawke, you knew the Knight-Captain was a complete and fumbling virgin. You wanted him, all of him, inside you._

He had left her with the strange tingle of lyrium pulsing through her, starting low, deep down and rising till all her nerves seemed to purr with that odd, vibrant song.

_And you are the fool. You are a mage._

 

*******

 

So it was that on Tuesday morning she dressed herself for their weekly visit. Perhaps that day she spent a little more time than usual fussing over her hair, the faintest smudge of kohl at the corners of her eyes. Perhaps for the first time she looked in her mirror and wondered how it was he saw her when he looked at her. Wondered how she had looked to him. Wondered what he thought of her now.

She made her way to the Gallows. The ferryman nodded to her, accustomed to her weekly visits.

Through the hall, past Meredith’s closed door, Orsino’s watchful, unreadable eye. Wondering what the hell she was going to say to him.

_Three blood mages. Seven bandits. And innocence. I killed a unicorn. I stamped all over it and watched it bleed._

She hated the knot in her stomach as she neared his office door, refused to acknowledge it. She pushed the door open.

‘Cu...’ The name died on her lips as she entered.

‘Serah Hawke,’ the man sitting at Cullen’s desk said, shifting uncomfortably.

‘Ser... Thrask,’ she said. Her face felt warm. She felt like Cullen, with all his awkward, stammering blushes.

‘The Knight-Captain asked me to take your reports,’ he said. A subtle slant to his demeanour suggested to Hawke that he knew more than he was saying.

What did he know? Hawke wanted to shake it out of him. Standing at the door, she frowned. ‘Where is he?’

‘He has an appointment with the Knight-Commander,’ Thrask said, avoiding her gaze. He was a horrible liar. Like the man he was covering for.

‘The hell he does,’ Hawke said. She sat down in the chair and stared implacably at Thrask.

‘Hawke,’ he said, learning forward, seeming anguished, ‘what did you do?’

‘I’ve no idea what you’re talking about,’ she said automatically.

‘I’ve never seen him so cold,’ Thrask said. ‘You don’t understand. When he first came to Kirkwall he was like this, walled-off from the rest of us. They did something to him at Kinloch Hold, when the Tower was corrupted, before he came here. He never told me what exactly. It took him a year to regain some semblance of normalcy. He was... becoming himself again.’

All of this was news to her. How little had she actually known him before she’d opened her legs for him? It was not something that she had ever cared much about, knowing people. Now she did. More than she wanted to admit.

When she didn’t reply, Thrask said, ‘I fear he is our last bastion against Meredith’s growing paranoia.’

‘You dare say that here? Two doors down from her office? You’ve more balls than I ever imagined,’ she told him, avoiding the growing pain inside her heart.

‘So does Ser Cullen,’ he said, looking at her sadly.

Hawke couldn’t bear the weight of his regard. ‘When I was here last Tuesday, we... made... We had... We f...’ She let the unspoken truth trail off. ‘I don’t think he really wanted to. I did it anyway.’

Thrask sighed. It was clear he had known, or at least suspected, by his lack of surprise.

‘Hawke,’ he said, ‘you are playing a singularly dangerous game. Meredith is half-mad. You don’t understand. She relies almost completely on the one person she thinks she can trust. He is the one voice that has any chance at holding her back. If she thought for one second the Knight-Captain’s loyalties were... misaligned, I can’t imagine what she would do.’

‘What do you want from me?’ Hawke asked.

He raised his hands in the air. ‘What do you think you should do?’

‘I’m not the only one who’s done stupid things,’ Hawke said pointedly, regretting the harshness of her words the moment she said them. She was thinking of his daughter, of course, once-hidden, now dead. His face seemed to crumple inward, and suddenly she was ashamed.

He sighed and regarded her, again with that look of melancholy on his face. 'Some people take, Hawke. They take until there's nothing left to take. They sit alone on empty thrones and wonder at the silence that surrounds.' Hawke thought his eyes flickered, for a moment, in the direction of Meredith Stannard's closed office door.

He leaned back in Cullen's chair. ‘I was once young, Hawke. I've had many regrets in my life. My daughter's fate was the greatest one of them. If you continue on your course, Kirkwall will suffer for it. Not you.’

‘And Cullen?’

Thrask said nothing. He only looked at her. In his eyes Hawke felt the weight of a sorrow that went past anything she had ever felt. More than the loss of Carver, of her father. Those things she had not caused. What did Thrask know? He knew regret. He walked in guilt.

‘Your report, messere,’ Thrask said, picking up the quill, and Hawke let the words fall from her lips, numb.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a bad, bad person rolling in my giant ball of cawkeangst I heart you all I'm sorry.


	11. before the qun

**CULLEN**

 

Cullen, who had gone to the chapel in an attempt to pray and also to go somewhere he had the least chance of running into Hawke, returned to find Thrask still sitting in his office, mulling over Hawke’s report, eyeing him uncertainly.

‘Ser Thrask,’ he said. ‘I appreciate the help.’

‘Cullen.’ Thrask seldom used his name. ‘Is everything... alright?’

He shrugged. ‘Of course.’

‘Right,’ Thrask said, sounding completely unconvinced. ‘If you need someone to talk to, I...’

‘I’m fine,’ Cullen said, cutting him off. It was unworthy of him. Thrask was one of the few templars he could consider a friend of sorts. Even so, he knew Thrask didn’t always tell him everything. Because he was the Knight-Captain. Because he had Meredith’s ear.

The older man let out an exhalation of breath. ‘I’ll leave this with you, then.’

‘Ser Thrask. If you wouldn’t mind taking Serah Hawke’s reports from now on?’

‘Of course,’ his subordinate said, and seemed about to say something. But Cullen only turned and went to his window, and eventually he heard the door click shut.

He read through Hawke’s typically terse report, imagining the events behind the words. Hawke, fighting off everything that was dark and unholy in Kirkwall. Protecting him. Hawke, on his desk beneath him, gasping his name. The look on her face when he had blurted out what was forbidden in every possible way to him.

 

The Knight-Captain of Kirkwall stood by the fireplace of his chamber, fist pressed against the mantelpiece, head jammed against his fist. His other hand gripped the stone ledge so hard his knuckles were bright white.

 _What had he done?_  She was a mage, Maker be damned. Even if she was not part of the Circle. Even if he had let himself forget. Maker forbid the Knight-Commander should find out. Two doors away from her, he had betrayed her. And it was not the Knight-Commander he meant. 

The brand of the sun on her forehead. The image flickered in his mind. Like Maddox, only a thousand times worse. Meredith would hang her from the walls, break her. Make an example of her. _Even you can't stop fifty templars, Hawke._

How could he have fallen so far? How could he have done that to her? Hawke was the only person he trusted in the pit of vipers that was Kirkwall. She had let him into her world, in trust. He had betrayed her. He could not give her what she wanted, whatever it was. Once again he regretted the words that had slipped from his mouth. She had never promised him anything. Not love. Not the illusion he had created. Only the warmth and brightness that sometimes chased away the screams in his dark.

All his life he’d kept his principles, stuck to his ideals of right and wrong. Discipline, the only thing that had kept him alive while all around him his brethren fell into madness and blubbering decay. He had abandoned it.

He should have declined, found a gentle excuse. Behind his eyes lay the memories of unending sobs and screams. She was an impossibility, a dream that would forever dance out of reach, that should never have been sullied by his touch.

Instead he had succumbed.  _Again_.

His hands on hers, on her skin, traversing the contours of her body. The want, the yearning, the ruthless need in him. Losing control.  _You will hurt her_.  _You want to hurt her._

 _No._ He covered his eyes with his hands, dug his fingertips into the hollows of his eyes. Would that yanking his eyes out could take the visions away from him. He saw his own face, twisted and hideous, looming over her, her face stained with fear.

What had happened? What was real? Perhaps he was an abomination, the demons still in him, all these years on. Forever. He had told himself he would never do anything untoward to her, and he had fallen, in his very own office, on his very own desk. How could he ever stop himself from the madness in his head?

Later, he woke from sleep, and realized he had been woken by his own screams. The sheets were soaked through with sweat. He sat straight up in his bed and wished himself dead.

 

 

The dream had twisted on him. There were no voices, just silence, and when he opened his mouth to call out, there was only air. There was only Hawke, and instead of the old dream, he saw her walking away from him, out of reach forever.

He had been a coward. He had run, and he ran still.

 _You could never resist us,_  the voice said. His own voice.  _You all falter. In the end. You will fall._

 

 

 

 

**HAWKE**

 

'What's going on?' Aveline asked. 'You look like a thundercloud.'

Varric made an exaggerated show of pulling his pocketwatch out and checking it. 'Knight-Captain time,' he said.

'Oh,' Aveline said, and shook her head disapprovingly.

Hawke scraped her knife along the edge of the table.

'Hey, lay off my table,' Varric said.

'Your table.'

'I own part of this rotten tavern now, you know.' He divested her of the blade and put it back on the table in front of him. 'What's got your knickers in a twist?'

'I think I'm going to take a walk,' Hawke announced. 'Alone.' To the Gallows, since it was Tuesday, and Varric was a very good time-keeper. The leap in her heart, the one she had denied for so long, was there, and it would be unfulfilled. Thrask had taken Hawke's reports for the past few weeks.  

Thus it was with surprise that Hawke made her way into the Knight-Captain's office that Tuesday morning and found the Knight-Captain actually there.

'Serah Hawke,' Cullen said, not looking up from his desk and the elaborate stacks of paper arranged on it in anal-retentive piles. How long had it been since she’d seen him at his desk? He had patched together the little chessboard with paste, but the cracks were still there.

'Cul... Knight-Captain,' she said, feeling awkward. It wasn't a commonplace feeling for her to have, and she hated it. How distant could they be after that moment only weeks ago? She could still feel his breath on her skin, his body flushed and desperate and full of need for her.

He obviously wasn't intending to make her feel any more at ease.

'Your report, Serah Hawke,' he said in a voice so neutral it was almost offensive. The quill rasped against his parchment.

'Where's Ser Thrask?' she asked.

'He's away,' Cullen said, and didn't elaborate.

Hawke, unbidden, seated herself in her chair and said nothing until he muttered something under his breath and looked at her.

'What is it you want from me?' he asked.

'I'm just here to give a report,' she said.

'Then do that,' he said. He looked down again, but the hand that had been holding the quill began to twirl it between two fingers instead, rolling it back and forth unsteadily.

'Are you angry?' she said.

He put the quill down, stood up and went to the window. 'No,' he said, but the tone of his voice said otherwise.

Hawke sighed. 'Six abominations, assorted lesser demons, darkspawn. The requisite blood mage. A nest of apostates by the docks. I've given up counting spiders.'

Cullen stayed by the window, his hand resting on the windowsill, looking out over the water.

Hawke's natural reaction to silence was to try and fill it.

'Having a bad day, Knight-Captain?' she asked.

'Which one?' he asked, turning around to look at her. 'All of my days are bad.'

'I'm only here on Tuesdays,' she said, trying to make light of the situation, trying to make things the way they had been.

'Strange as it might seem,' he said, 'my days don't solely revolve around you, Hawke.' He folded his arms over his chest. His voice was hard.

Hawke stood up. 'I'll see you next Tuesday,' she said, her voice matching the hardness of his.

He didn't say anything as she left. What had she hoped, that he would call out to her? Stop her from leaving? She got nothing of the sort.

 

 

**ALRIK**

 

'Well,' said a voice from behind her. An unpleasant male voice. She could hear the leer in it. 'Serah Hawke, her very self. Our dear Knight-Captain's little friend.'

'Did you need something? Other than mouthwash?'

'Oh,' Ser Alrik said, 'I've been wondering for a long time what you do for  _Ser_  Cullen.' The little emphasis he put on the honorific made it rather clear to Hawke how he felt about Cullen's position.

'What are you suggesting?' she asked, keeping her voice light even as the anger welled up in her. Not here. Not now. Give them no excuse.

'I always wondered if you keep your mouth shut when he shoves his cock in you, or if you just keep talking the whole damned time.'

Hawke froze for a second before she realised Alrik was just being crude. He didn't know. He couldn't know. She made the shock subside. 'Oh, I’m silent sometimes, Ser. Like when I’ve run out of words simple enough for you.'

The hate in Alrik's eyes flared, and for one second Hawke almost reached for her staff. Instead she made herself keep walking, past him, though she half-expected him to grab her and drag her back.

He said something vile, barely audible, as she left. Hawke was suddenly thankful she had never had to suffer Alrik's leers in the Circle. She thought of nights unprotected in the Circle, lying awake in a room that was little more than a cell. Where protectors might be the very people you needed protection from.

 _It's our duty to protect_ , Cullen had said. Hawke knew he believed it. She had seen him act upon it. She had seen Thrask and Emeric likewise. But Alrik, Karras, the way they looked at her made her skin crawl. There was no protection there.

 

**LAST ON THE LINE**

 

She grew used to Cullen's silences at the Gallows, listening to her reports, saying hardly anything. Kirkwall weighed down on her shoulders anyway. Her own voice issued, monotone as his, through leaden lips. She told him everything. She had to. She wanted to know if she stood alone. Always the same response from him.  _The Order will aid the city_.

 _But will you stand with me?_  She wanted to ask. She could not. Thrask's words had touched something within her. That part of her that she tried to suppress. The part that needed to feel a part of something. The world. Anything. Worthwhile.

Kirkwall's cries for aid rose all around her, and she was drowning.  _Yes, I'll be your blade._  She killed and she bled and she killed again. Though her words were still glib, she felt empty inside. Dead.

On a cold evening, as autumn tumbled down around her in a flurry of red leaves and dead twigs, she stood in her garden and stared up at the sky.

_Hawke. I am Hawke. I am almost the last of my line. The last Hawke in Kirkwall._

She had left a little detail out of her reports to the Knight-Captain. The last footnote on a routine report on a fugitive blood mage. She had mentioned the murders, the dead women, but not the full horror of the night. She was numb to it all. If she didn't think about it, perhaps it would cease to exist, fall away into dead memories.

Hawke knelt at the stone in the small graveyard at the back of the estate. She had burned what was left of her mother, and nobody had questioned that decision. Hands and arms and neck patched together, a mocking collection of skins and flesh in motley.  _If it were me, I'd want to burn._

Here she had erected headstones for her father, mother and brother. She knelt outside in the night, when no-one could see her, keeping a vigil she could not name.

 _Just the usual, Knight-Captain. A fugitive blood mage. I took care of him._  And the nod, the scratch of the quill on paper, his voice, dismissing her. A footnote. Another pinch of ash in a glass vial.

She knelt there until her knees were numb. In the morning, slumped outside under her cloak on a cold stone bench, she awoke to the clarion calls of Kirkwall, erupting with war.

 


	12. house with empty doors

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And he looked. Maker, he looked.

**HAWKE**

 

Kirkwall had gone to shit. The city was a mess of screams and death. The Qunari had taken the keep, and from what the few early escapees had to say, Viscount Dumar did not look long to survive his son. If he hadn't already met his fate.

'Meet me there,' Hawke shouted at her companions, then took off at a run towards the keep. She was faster than anyone when she slid through the Fade. She was burning lyrium to maintain her pace. Cullen would have disapproved, she thought, and thinking of him made her want to move faster. She checked her supplies. Better save some. She had been letting the energies propel her forward, and now she collected herself just in time to run into the very Knight-Captain himself.

Cullen reached out and caught her arm. The circles under his eyes were darker than usual. 'Hawke,' he said, his voice breathless. 'Are you...' He looked so worried. Afraid. For her.

Such a difference from his recent coldness at the Gallows. The sun felt suddenly warm on her face.

'I'm going to the keep,' she said.

His fingers squeezed her arm urgently. 'Hawke! The Qun has taken it. It's not safe in there. The Arishok is--'

'Meredith told me.' she said. 'That's why I'm headed there. I can stop him. I have to save Dumar. I have to save--'

'No, wait... Let me accompany you.' Her heart gladdened at his solicitousness, even in the midst of all the madness. But she had to go. She detached his hand from her arm, not ungently, and flashed him a quick smile.

'I'll see you there,' she said, and she was off and running.

 

**CULLEN**

 

The Qunari were all over Kirkwall. Meredith had sent the templars out in full force, stepping out herself, despatching Cullen to lead the bulk of the troops.

He had them making progress through the streets, cutting down the Qunari where they could, standing between them and the people who needed them. A very familiar figure shot out from around the corner in front of him. One that refused to listen to him. One he was desperately glad to see.

Her fingers gave his hand the gentlest, most tender of squeezes as she removed his grip, to his surprise. Then she flashed away.

‘No!’ Cullen grasped at empty air. He started after her, then fell back into the fray to defend the civilians cowering against the wall. He would never catch up with her, not in full plate, and Hawke moved like a greased bolt of lightning anyway. All he could do was hurry after her, yelling balefully for his men to keep pace.

He had troops to manage, forces to direct. He stopped where he could to help those who hadn't yet made it to safety. Hence he only made it to the Keep in time to see Meredith standing there with Hawke and her companions, the giant Qunari sending Dumar's head rolling across the ground. He saw Hawke accept the Arishok's duel, saw her refuse to give up even someone who had betrayed her. He realised how she'd grown in standing, that the great Qunari would take her deal, actually offer the city a chance because of his regard for her.  _So heroes are made. Or broken._

Hawke stood in the middle of the hall, looking pathetically small in front of the hulking beast that was the Arishok. Cullen thought about the way he had seen her fight. _A dragon._ She had killed dragons, ogres, countless demons.

 _I'm going to live forever,_ she had told him, standing by the chasm under Kirkwall, surrounded by blood. Why then did his heart tighten in fear?

She reached into the air. As her blade slid out from whatever plane it existed on, her hand curled around it -- and the Arishok charged with a bull-cry of rage and sent her flying with a massive stroke. Hawke barely managed to throw up her barrier in time, to the collective gasp of the assembled nobles. Cullen didn't know if he had reacted, but he caught Meredith's eyes on him.

She reeled a little, but stepped through the fade in a bolt of shimmering energy, trying to put enough distance between herself and him. He went for her again, and Cullen realised he was holding his breath.

All she seemed to be doing was running away, hiding behind a pillar here and there. Maker, she was fast, but so was the Arishok, for a being that size.

Three times he saw her just narrowly leap away from the Arishok's giant blade. Again he charged. He was unbelievably fast for a creature so large.

She slid through the air, blurring in that odd way Cullen had never seen another mage move. The Arishok reached through the narrow confines of their makeshift arena.

And caught her, pulling her out of the plane shift. Hawke cried out, a sound of fury or pain that happened too fast to interpret. Cullen found his own hand on the hilt of his sword. Ahead of him, Meredith unfolded her arms, what he could see of her face darkening. She reached for her own blade. He saw her check the troops in the hall, scan the Qun's forces.

Hawke sent electricity crackling into the immense bulk of the Arishok, who threw her down, slamming her into the ground as she tumbled and twisted away desperately. Surely nothing could survive the force of the next blow. He brought his giant blade crashing down upon her.

With a groan, Hawke barely brought her staff and blade up to block him, and stumbled away, barely on her feet. The battle was wearing her down. Her breath was ragged and raw, coming in gasps. Her armour was dented and dusty from where she had clattered against the floor. She leaned against her staff as she moved back, keeping her distance from him.

Suddenly she made her move, driving a bolt of lightning at the giant Qunari so he had to leap away. As he did, she sent herself forward again, striking him with the ethereal blade as she did so. He roared in pain and lashed out at her. This time a line of red streaked across her nose. She whirled. She thrust the blade forward and rolled away, escaping his answering strike by a fraction.

Cullen found himself looking at the head of Dumar, staring lifelessly up at the ceiling.  _This is what awaits the rest of us if she fails._

That, of course, was the only reason he felt his own breath stop.

So many times the Arishok came near to dealing her a fatal blow. So many times Hawke almost impaled him with her own blade, and missed. Her spells did no worthy damage. Her lyrium supplies were all but gone. She could have bought her family's estate back ten times over with the amount of lyrium she was imbibing.

Finally she staggered against a pillar, slumping against it to catch her breath. The Arishok made his move. He crashed towards her -- and Hawke moved. A small step through the fade, carefully ended just so she ended behind him. As he turned, she lashed out with her blade and caught him across the neck. Blood fountained from his neck as she leapt away. He reached for her one last time, but his outstretched arm fell to his side as he toppled slowly to the floor.

Still he knelt, reaching for her.

There Hawke stood, bloody and battered.

Cullen realised he was in awe of her, just as the rest of the hall seemed to be. Hawke moved forward. Her expression was so cold he shuddered.

‘You’ll never have Kirkwall,’ she said. She stood in front of the giant Qunari and raised her glimmering blade. ‘You’ll pay for what you did today.’

Slowly, deliberately, she drew the blade across his throat and watched the life bleed from him.

Meredith stepped forward, and for a moment Cullen thought she intended to take Hawke to the Circle, feared she would call upon him to do his duty.

The Knight-Commander did nothing of the sort. Instead she offered Hawke a hand to stand.

'Well done,' she said.

Then, to everyone's surprise, Meredith Stannard named Hawke of Lothering the Champion of Kirkwall.

She turned to a nonplussed Cullen on her way out. 'Assist the Guard and our citizens, Knight-Captain,' she said.

Hawke turned to regard the nobles who had crept back into the hall. Her eyes fell on Cullen. Her face was still unreadable, but she held his gaze a moment before turning back to Meredith.

‘Thank you, Knight-Commander,’ she said. She was all business, all formality. Nothing like the laughing wag she played most of the time.

‘I’ll meet with you later in the week, Champion,’ Meredith said. ‘I have matters to attend to. Guard Captain, I trust your troops will be seeing to this mess. Knight-Captain, if the Guard requires assistance, see to it.’

‘At once, Knight-Commander,’ Cullen said, looking over at Aveline, who nodded.

Meredith’s glance fell upon the head of Viscount Dumar, and her lips pursed, but she said nothing more as she turned and left.

‘We don’t need much aid,’ Aveline said, coming over to Cullen. ‘I’ve got the city covered. You should get some rest.’ Cullen wiped at his face. Blood came off it.

He shrugged. ‘It’s nothing. I’m glad we didn’t suffer greater losses.’ His eyes travelled over to Hawke.

The Guard Captain peered at him, and then she glanced at the newly-made Champion, who was sitting on the stairs, staring off into space. Her companions were elsewhere in the hall, helping with the chaos. Cullen knew he should do something, but Aveline caught his torn expression and thumbed him over to Hawke.

‘Go on,’ she said. ‘I'll take care of things. It’ll do her good to talk to someone. She hasn't been the same since...’

'What is it?' Cullen asked, feeling worry gnaw at him. He had been pretending all this while that he didn't, wouldn't care. He couldn't stop himself.

Aveline looked at him. 'I suppose she didn't say. Her mother passed.' There was anger on her face. He didn't understand.

'I thought she'd have told you, with those reports she gives you every week.'

He shook his head, wordless. 'When?' he asked, his voice sounding desperate to his own ears.

'A couple of weeks,' Aveline said, reaching out and patting his arm gently.

He'd interpreted her terseness as a desire not to see him, thought that she'd wanted nothing to do with him anymore. Guilt washed over him. He could only listen in horror as Aveline told him. Murder. The mage holed up in Darktown that Hawke had mentioned only in passing, as though it had happened to someone else. She hadn't wanted to tell him. She had mentioned it only as she went out the door, and he had half-heartedly written it down. Practically omitted it as an afterthought.

Cullen assigned his troops under Aveline's command, and then he sat down besides Hawke on the stairs, his heart in his mouth, sadness washing over him.

‘Hawke,’ he said gently.

‘Cullen.’

‘Congratulations,’ he said, though there was so much more clumped behind the word, struggling for an exit. So much more he wanted to say. ‘You’re the Champion now.’

‘That’s me. Champion of Kirkwall.’ Her tone was flat and dry. ‘What’s it good for?’

‘You saved the entire city today,’ he said softly.

‘Someone else would have done it. You showed up. Meredith showed up with that ridiculous sword of hers.’

‘But the Qun left, Hawke. If he hadn’t agreed to let you settle the score with that duel, we would have had a full-scale war on our hands.’

She said nothing.

‘There was less bloodshed because of you,’ he said.

‘You and Meredith and the Guards would have stopped them,’ Hawke said. He had never seen her so despondent before. ‘Everywhere I go, there’s bloodshed,’ she said. ‘My brother died the minute we left Lothering. I couldn’t save him then. I couldn’t save the Viscount. Bethany... is gone. My mother...’

Cullen placed his hand on her shoulder. Touching her like this, this was safe. He longed to lift his hand to her cheek and caress her face the way he had last. That. That way lay danger.

'You saved me,' he said quietly, and she looked up at him.

All he wanted to do was run his hands across her skin and hold her as though nothing could ever come between them again. Yet there was still the distance across which he looked at her, knight-captain to apostate, far from heaven, out of reach.

‘I’m truly sorry, Hawke,’ he said. ‘I heard. I'm... If there’s anything I can do to help, you have only to ask.’

She sat there in silence for a long moment.

‘I should go. Wash all this blood off my hands.'

'I'll see you home,' he said, and offered her his hand.

In silence, she took it, and closed the great divide.

She stood, wavering a bit. Her face was weary. She looked exhausted.

 _Assist the citizens,_  Meredith had said. Well, the Champion clearly counted as a citizen. Cullen gave her his arm to steady her. Just duty, he told himself.

'Thanks,' she said, holding on to him with a hand. Nothing more. No witticisms, none of the wisecracks Cullen had once thought insufferable, but had grown to miss when they were gone. Her normally-insouciant voice was drained and dead. 

For once, Cullen couldn't stand the silence. 'What's wrong?' he asked. 'Are you... all right?'

'No,' she said. 'I don't know.'

'Are you hurt?'

'No.' She stumbled. He caught her with both hands.

'Hawke...'

'I'm fine,' she said, but she leaned against him, looking sick.

'What...' He half-carried her to her door.

'Can't think,' she mumbled as she slumped against him, handing him her key. He fumbled with the lock while keeping hold of her.

Cullen surveyed the mansion that was before him. The Amell family home. Where she belonged. As always, the thought of the Amells sent an image into his mind. He put it aside, but it troubled him. It lingered.

Her dwarven manservant came to greet them, then, startled by his mistress's appearance, ushered Cullen in.

'Please, ser,' he said. 'If you'll help the mistress to her chambers, I'll draw a bath for her.'

The thought of it would normally have made the blood rush to Cullen's face. He was too worried about her to think of that. He lifted her into his arms and brought her up the stairs, where the door was open, the dwarf fussing around. Hawke was barely-conscious, flopping against him, mumbling incoherently. As though living a nightmare.

He laid her down gently on the bed and brushed the hair out of her face with his fingers, tucked it behind her ears.

'Cullen,' she murmured, one of her hands going up to catch at his arm. 'You could stay. For a while.' Her eyes were barely open. ' _Please._ '

It was the most impassioned request she had ever made of him. The most emotion he'd ever heard from her. He knew he should say no, return to the Gallows.

He did not.

The dwarf returned with a young elf who gasped when she saw the state Hawke was in. She glanced at Cullen, uncertain. 'Ser, if you... if you wouldn't mind assisting me with the mistress's armour.'

Awkwardly, Cullen undid the straps that bound the bulk of Hawke's light plate and mail, then backed away. 'I'll leave the rest to you,' he said, rubbing the side of his neck. 'I'll, er. I'll wait outside.'

'No,' Hawke grumbled. 'I want...'

But her head lolled back. Cullen stepped outside and shut the door. There was a heavy splash, and some complaints from the newly-created Champion of Kirkwall, and then a grunt. 

'Ser,' the dwarf said. 'I've run another bath for you in the guest suite, if you'd care to. We have spare clothing that should suit you.'

Cullen followed him. Maker, it felt good to get all his stinking plate off, and the rest of his clothes. The water was so warm. He was used to the cold baths of the Gallows. He shut his eyes for what he thought was a second, let the aches in his body unwind.

He heard the door open.

'What...' He pulled his knees up to hide his nakedness and turned his head to look behind him.

It was Hawke, who seemed more awake, though still groggy. 'Sorry,' she said. 'I wanted to thank you.'

'You're not in the habit of knocking?'

'I'm not looking,' she said. 'I mean, I saw it all before anyway.' He studied her. She was dressed in a simple black bathrobe. Maker, if there was ever a time he had been tested, it was here, now, in her house, trapped in her bathtub. For the love of...

'I don't want to be alone,' she said, and the exhaustion in her voice made his heart quaver.

'Don't look,' he said, as he stepped out of the bath. He was used to bathing in the company of others, having grown up with three siblings, and with countless other templars. It was different thinking of her eyes on him. She made him feel naked, even under layers of steel plate and mail.

He towelled himself down and dressed in the simple Ferelden shirt and trousers her manservant had left on the bed. Hawke sat facing away from him, her hands on her knees, head drooping.

'Those are--those were my brother's,' Hawke said. 'Carver's.'

Her dead brother. He had a vision of her, phial of ash in her fingers, hand raised to the wind.

'I'm sorry,' he said.

'I'm alone,' she said. 'It feels strange.'

'I know something of that,' he said.

'I fought so hard to take back this estate for my family,' she continued. 'But I'm the only one left here. It seems so stupid. I don't even care. I have wealth, a title, a  _title_ , and an empty house.' It was true. For someone wealthier than half of Kirkwall combined, her house was remarkably spartan.

'You have friends,' he told her. 'Good friends.'

She lay back on the bed. 'I do,' she said. 'I couldn’t have made it this far if I didn't.'

He said nothing.

'Cullen,' she said. 'You never sent me to the Circle. Why not? It's not just because I saved your life, is it?'

'No,' he said, 'though it was a part of it.'

'Because you... felt something for me?'

'No.' That much was true. He would never have let something as personal as that affect any of his decisions.

'Why?'

How could he explain it to her, when he could barely explain it to himself? He thought of the words he had given Meredith. That Hawke was doing so much good for the city she would be a far better asset as an ally. Not to mention the thought of her inside the Gallows, meddling, was frankly horrific. Privately he suspected she wouldn't have lasted a day before being made Tranquil. It was something he didn't want to consider.

It always came back, in his mind, to the things he had said at the Ferelden Circle, going around and around in his head, full circle. He wanted to break that pattern. _I am not that boy, lost and terrified._

So he said the only thing he could. Truth, the words that had been building within him.

'I saw you,' he said. 'As a person.'

***

He waited for her in the foyer for dinner, on his knees, grinning stupidly at her mabari, and finally she came down the stairs from her room. Knowing Hawke, she had probably timed her entry for best effect, but he couldn’t tear his eyes off her anyway.

She was wearing a feminine, revealing dress that hugged her body. The cut of the dress plunged almost down to her navel in a fur-trimmed vee, giving him a view that was making him feel extremely uncomfortable. Her dress was Ferelden, like the clothes he wore. Like both of them. They had both run from it, but there was a place inside that would never leave.

‘You are beautiful,’ he said quietly, patting her dog and getting to his feet, hearing his voice catch in his throat.

She paused at the foot of the staircase and gave a little twirl.

‘Why, thank you,’ she said. ‘I suppose that means all the money I spent on this stupid thing was worth it.’

‘I was always surprised you of all people own a dress,’ Cullen said, half-babbling to cover up his discomfiture. 'Or dresses.' He remembered the ball, remembered his hand on her waist, remembered... other things.

‘So am I. But I was pretty much forced into it. Apparently it’s deathly rude to show up at functions in your armour. If you’re not a guard or templar, that is. I think as the Champion I should get to set some new rules, don’t you?’

‘It looks... very nice.’

‘You look very nice. Although Carver's clothes are a little... tight on you.’ There was a note of appreciation in her voice that made him blush. She came over to him and put her arm through his. ‘Shall we? Dinner should be served soon, in the hall. Can you believe I have a hall? I still can’t.’

‘I am surprised you have a dog,’ he remarked. Seeing the broad-shouldered mabari had made him think of Ferelden, for once without flinching. ‘You seem like you would get along better with cats.’

'Dog, bite the Knight-Captain,' she said, but the great hound gave her a mournful eye and flopped over on the floor, one paw cocked at Cullen. It gladdened his heart to see a smile form on her face.

‘It’s a rare gift,’ Cullen said, ‘to have a mabari choose you.’ He dipped his knee and gave the war dog one final, wistful pat.

‘Who wouldn’t?’ Hawke shot him her old, sly grin. 'He likes you. You still have hands.'

She steered him gently on, pointed out rooms as they passed, save for one door, on which her voice faltered and she skipped over.

‘Are you feeling alright?’ he asked, realising she was talking to avoid talking.

‘Not really,’ she said. ‘But what’s the point of dwelling on it? I’ll feel better the day after, and the day after that. And the next. There’s always people to kill. Always people looking to kill me, too. Keeps me on my toes.’ She smiled, but it was humourless.

The dinner bell rang, and they seated themselves. Hawke sat next to him at the corner of the long table. Her knee brushed his as she sat down, sending a thrill through him. She didn’t move away. Neither did he.

‘You know,’ she said as they ate in the soothing stillness of her hall, ‘Sister Petrice raised a mob to come after me in the Chantry. I don’t know if you heard about that.’

‘I heard a brief report,’ he said. ‘Nothing more.’

‘They were just ordinary people,’ she said. ‘People she’d convinced to pick up a rusty sword, to throw their lives away to keep me occupied.’

She took a long draught of wine and set her goblet down.

‘I cut through them like they were butter. They wouldn’t stop coming.’

‘You did what you had to.' He tried to look at her face and not the essence of  _woman_  rounding out below her neck.  _Control yourself. You can't control yourself._

‘Did I? Is that all I am? A weapon for all who call for me? I should just... stop. I don’t even need the money anymore. Supposedly, I have all I want. And yet I still feel like I’m nothing. Just trying to tease out some meaning from all this.’

‘Kirkwall wouldn’t be the same without you. I would... I would be dead on the Wounded Coast, if not for you.’

She pulled her chair in closer and leaned her chin on her hands. Now her thigh was resting against his. The heat of her body made him swallow hard.  _Don't look down._

‘You’re... I’ve never seen anyone fight like you. And I mean. You’re the Champion, Hawke. You saved so many people today. Your achievements are legend.’

‘It’s not a legend if it’s a fact,’ Hawke said, and he was glad to see some of her natural cockiness return.

‘You’re stronger than anyone else I’ve ever known,’ he said softly. ‘What you’ve been through in Kirkwall would have broken most people.’

She was quiet, looking up at him from under her thick, dark lashes.

‘Cullen,’ Hawke said, leaning towards him, giving him the most unbearable view of her torso, ripe and inviting, the undercurve of her breasts as they vanished under fur and the barest hint of fabric. And he looked. Maker, he looked. ‘I just wanted to ask you if you still... If you...’

She was at a loss for words. Instead she leaned even closer. Her lips parted. Her eyelids lowered. Her face tilted to his, a slow repeat of his own folly, the day he had almost fallen. He should have resisted, run, fled.

Instead he fell. Truthfully, he had fallen a thousand times over, staring into the abyss of her eyes from the very day he had met her, and he had kept falling. There was nobody else like her in his world, nobody else who made him want to believe he could be something more than what he was. To dare to hope.

Before he could help himself, he was kissing her, the way he had wanted to since he had first met her, and his hands tangled in her hair. She made a noise low in her throat that made him want to slide the dress off her shoulders. He wanted to push her down and rip it off her and take her  _until she screamed, until..._  He pushed at the image, forced it out of his mind.

‘Hawke,’ he murmured, his voice cracking. ‘I...’

_All your pretty vows, templar._

 

***

 

**HAWKE**

Hawke couldn’t believe he was actually kissing her again, after all this time. Every second of every hour that she’d waited since that fateful, awful, indescribable afternoon.

She slid her hand into the short curls of his hair, pulled him closer. There was something endearing about the way he fumbled his way around, not quite sure where to put his mouth.

He was a fast learner. He waited to see how she responded to his movements. She had been right about his repression damming up a flood of passion. He was certainly making up for his lack of experience. Gentle explorations turned into hot, heavy kisses, his lips dragging on hers, claiming her mouth, sending chills down her spine, setting her all alight.

She stood up and pulled him after her, into the study. He seemed oddly reluctant, even though his breath was coming in ragged spurts and his face was flushed. Still, he followed. She lay down on the chaise longue, and he let her pull him down over her. There was no mistake about it. He wanted her as much as she wanted him. His mouth was on hers, kissing her with a passion that was almost overwhelming, his hands stroking her face and hair. Yes. The only thing in his world. Yes. The desire that had risen in her was unbearable. Yes. She kicked her heeled slippers off and wrapped her legs around him, dragging him closer.

The telltale hardness that was pressed between her legs made her gasp. She could feel him through the thin layers of cloth that separated them. For too many lonely nights she had dreamt of how he’d felt between her legs, buried deep inside her. The desperation and the agony on his face as he'd filled her with his seed and his shame.

He kissed her as though stricken with fever.

Hawke arched her back and pressed her body against his, and they moved together in a timeless, ageless rhythm. He stared at her in wonder, as though she were something precious. Why then did she briefly catch a glimpse of fear in those soft brown eyes? He moaned as she ran her hand down, across his flat, hard stomach, to the stays of his trousers, as she pushed him back and bent over him, her lips parting.

Something changed in his face, arcing from bliss to horror, and he pulled away from her and stood up.

Hawke gasped. ‘What? What’s wrong?’

‘I can’t,’ he said, refusing to meet her gaze. ‘I’m sorry, Hawke. I just can’t.’

‘Was it something I did?’ She couldn't think. The hurt in her chest was real. She could feel it eating at her, twisting down and spiralling into her gut. She hoisted her skirt back down, feeling exposed, naked. The dress felt ridiculous, half-slipping off her body, and she pulled it up around her shoulders.

‘No,’ he said. ‘Never. You’re all I’ve ever... I just can’t.’

‘Is it because…’

‘I have to go. Hawke, I’m sorry. You deserve better than this. You should… forget about me.’

‘Stop it,’ she said, and she was between him and the door. ‘Is everything alright? What’s wrong?’

Cullen put his hands to the sides of his head. The old gesture, although it was not endearing, not at this moment. He was squeezing at his temples, as though trying to rip out his scalp.

‘I have to go,’ he said. ‘Please.’

Hawke stepped away in disbelief and silence, and Cullen gave her one last look as he went out, his eyes haunted. She could hear the front door closing in the distance.

Wordless, she sank down on the floor, pulling her knees into her chest, and learned back against the door, bereft and alone.

Champion of Kirkwall. Words had never tasted so bitter.

 

 

She sat there until she felt rooted in place, and looked up only when there was a faint rap on her door.

'Who's that?' Hawke asked. It would not be him.

Isabela stood inside her study, shifting almost as awkwardly as Cullen.

The anger rose in Hawke, and the pain.

'You used me,' she said quietly.

'No, I...' Isabela faltered. 'I did and I didn't,' she said, her head drooping. 'I didn't mean to.'

'What do you want? You've got what you wanted,' Hawke said. 'I almost died today. You weren't even there to see it.'

'I heard,' Isabela said, her voice sad. 'I wanted to say... I'm sorry.'

'Forget it.' Hawke wanted to get back into the warm bath and stay there until the water sucked her under.

'I... I have a ship, Hawke. Waiting for me. There's space on it for you, if you'll come.'

The silence was broken by Isabela's voice, continuing. 'You could be free. We could sail far away, where nobody knows who you are, or cares you're a mage, or... I mean, there's nothing keeping you here anymore.'

Hawke was silent a long while.

To be free. What did it mean? She was free, now, of everything that had ever tied her down. The old dream filled her with guilt. Everything she had fought for, that her mother had died for, was around her in the walls of the mansion. Blood, she thought. These walls were won back with blood, a garden of grey ashes.

'I can't,' she said.

Isabela looked up at her. 'I'll be waiting by the docks till midnight, if you change your mind. I... You could even bring that templar of yours, if you wanted. Maker knows he's no happier here.'

'I could,' Hawke said, with the ghost of a smile. 'But then he wouldn't be him, would he.' She gave Isabela a quick hug, despite everything, despite still resenting her. Hating her, perhaps, on some level. Loving her on another. Longing to let the waves carry her free.

'Don't wait for me,' she said.

 

 

The ship lingered until midnight. Hawke watched it leave from her vantage point near the docks, leaning against a stack of barrels.

'Hawke?'

It was Cullen, the shadows under his eyes even deeper than usual.

'Why are you here?' Hawke asked. She wondered how her voice sounded. Tired. Dead, perhaps.

'I just... I went back to your house, to see if you were all right. To apologise.' He seemed uncomfortable. ‘Your dwarven servant told me you had gone to the docks. I couldn't bear the thought of you sitting out here alone.’

'I'm just fine,' Hawke said.

He stepped closer to her. 'Whose ship is that?'

'Just someone I used to know,' Hawke said nonchalantly, letting the mask settle over her voice again. _Say nothing, do nothing. Feel nothing._

'I just wanted to ask you if...' He hesitated. 'If you were all right.'

'You said that,' Hawke said automatically.

'I meant it,' he said. There was a sorrow and a warmth in his voice she hadn't heard before, not even when they had made love and he had whispered her name into her ears. She still heard it echoing in the night, when she lay alone, the touch of his skin ghosting on hers, his gentle fingers.

'I couldn't sleep,' she told him, hopping up on one of the casks and seating herself on it. He seated himself next to her.

'I was worried about you,' he said, looking at her. ‘I’m sorry for leaving.’

'Thanks,' she said, and she meant it.

To her surprise, Cullen reached out and took her hand in his. His large hand held hers, his thumb traced the tender section of her hand between thumb and palm. He said nothing, didn't look at her. But his warmth stayed with her.

She leaned her head against his shoulder, wondering if he would shift away. Instead he dipped his shoulder to accommodate her. One of her hands rested on her leg, and he placed his own hand on hers, curling his fingers around hers, saying nothing, staring out into the water.

Perhaps she should say something. Ask the questions she needed answers to. Hawke didn’t know. For once, she didn’t care. She let the water and his gentle silence carry her thoughts away, into stillness, watching the ship's silhouette diminish into the mist and over the horizon.

 

 

He walked her home when they were done watching the ship sail away, after Hawke had heaved the longest sigh of the day. At her door, he stopped.

'Do you want to come in?' she asked softly.

'I can't,' he said. He pressed her hand in his, standing so near to her she thought he would kiss her. 'Hawke...'

She knew. 'Knight-Captain,' she said. The malice wasn't there.

'If...' He let his words trail off. 'This...'

Suddenly Hawke was tired. 'It doesn't matter.' She turned away from him and opened the door. A part of her waited, to see if he had anything else to say, but he let the moment die there.

'Good night,' he said.

'Tuesday,' she said. 'I'll be there.'

'That's another thing I have to tell you,' he said. She turned around to look at him again. 'The Knight-Commander doesn't want any external help around the Gallows.'

'Oh,' Hawke said, and felt nothing aside from wanting to laugh. What had she expected?

She looked up at him. 'Perhaps I should have... I should just have gone to the Circle like a good little girl, all those years ago. If I had taken Bethany there, she wouldn't have been dragged halfway around the world. Would never have...' She closed her eyes, saw the mottled grey patches on her sister's face. Blue cloth and grey steel hauling her away.

'No,' Cullen said, seemingly before he could stop himself.

Her mouth opened just as involuntarily. 'What?'

He seemed equally stunned. 'That is, I...' He ran his hand through his hair, raised the other hand as though about to explain, then dropped it. 'This is... I should go.'

'As you like,' she said, but despite herself, despite Bethany and her mother and Isabela and everything falling down around her, she felt a smile forming on her lips. 'Good night, Cullen.'

As he went down the steps, she called out to him. 'You're changing, Knight-Captain.'

If he heard, he didn't respond.

 

 

**CULLEN**

 

 

 _You're changing,_ she'd said. The thought terrified him.

 

When he next saw Meredith, she spoke of increasing prohibitions on the Circle mages, said they had too much freedom. He tried to reason with her, tried to explain that the tenuous stability of the Circle depended also on the morale of their charges. Too much misery was not only immoral but dangerous.

To which Meredith fixed him with a cold eye.

‘You speak a lot with the Champion.’ Meredith’s voice was typically brusque, but now the faintest hint of anger snapped at the corners of her mouth, through her mask.

Cullen was standing on very thin ice. He had no idea where Meredith was going with this. She had seemed comfortable, even friendly towards Hawke the last time they had spoken of her. She had made her Champion. Her inconsistencies kept mounting.

‘Yes, Knight-Commander,’ he said cautiously. Did he sound convincingly casual? What did she suspect? She grew increasingly absent these days. He still didn’t think she cared a whit about what went on in the Gallows, or Kirkwall for that matter. The only thing she talked about was mages and how they were constantly overstepping their boundaries. The words were too close to echoes of his own. They shamed him.

He had been trying to rein in her anger, but she was unstoppable in her ire. No. Her hatred. He couldn’t call it anything less now.

'You made her the Champion,' Cullen said, his brow furrowing. 'Even though she's an apostate.'

'A useful tool, is she not? An ally. I thought you would be pleased. You suggested her aid many a time.' There was a strange air of challenge in her voice. Her eyes were piercing. Unfathomable.

The Knight-Commander said, cryptically, 'She'll prove herself more useful to us this way.' Whether she meant that Hawke would have a harder time hiding anything now that she was in the public eye, Cullen didn't know.

He gated his words. No questions, not with Meredith in this strange, unstable mood. Instead he only nodded. 'Yes, Knight-Commander.'

She didn’t look up at him. She was leafing through the scrolls on her desk. ‘It seems her values are... interesting. Tell me, do you believe she’s truly aligned with us? Our cause cannot be derailed.’

‘I believe the Champion has the best interests of Kirkwall at heart,’ Cullen said. ‘We are the protectors of the city. She stands with us. She has never given us any reason to doubt otherwise.’

Meredith looked up then. She said nothing. Her gaze bored through him. Cullen stood under the weight of her regard and refused to budge.

'You've spent time outside your duties with her.'

He felt a chill crawl down his spine.

‘Did you think I wouldn’t notice?’

‘I didn’t think it was important,’ Cullen began. 'I--'

Her gaze flickered over him again. 'Once,' she said, 'there were rumours about you. I trusted in you. I thought those were merely the vagaries of a boy's foolish lust. Now rumours of you and the Champion have reached my ears, and I ask you again -- What is there between you?'

Truthfully, Cullen could now say  _nothing_ , though he wished it otherwise. Of course, now that it was so, Meredith looked at him with narrowed eyes.

‘You will not see the Champion on any level that is not strictly professional,’ she said. ‘We are templars. We uphold the virtues of the Order, we set examples to our own. We do not mingle with apostates.’

'As you wish, Knight-Commander,' he said, masking the pain in his voice, saying the words as though they were casual and meaningless, as though he never cared if he never spoke to Hawke again.

Finally the Knight-Commander shrugged and waved a hand. ‘Dismissed,’ she said. All the vestiges of warmth, not that she had ever been a warm person, had vanished. With an uneasy heart, Cullen left her office.

  

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So much angst, so many apologies...
> 
> As penance I'll update daily. ;_____________; (cullenface)


	13. beneath the gallows, below the root

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'You're the Knight-Captain. Figure it out.'

**HAWKE**

 

A scream bounced off the walls, echoing all around her, and she was instantly alert. Her staff sprang into her hand, her spirit blade into the other, and she went down the tunnel, as unobtrusively as possible.

The sight that met her was horrific not just for what was going on, but for what it represented; what had been going on, what else might happen and…  _had he known?_

The young, robed girl sprawled at the feet of the bald templar, the sneer on his face, the men standing behind him, waiting.

It was then that Hawke realised she had left all her lyrium in the pack she had handed to Fenris, telling him to find the others, to look the other way for the missing girl.

Five templars. And she had used up a lot of her energies getting there with Fenris.  _People like you keep taking,_  Thrask had said.  _Until there's nothing left to take._  He hadn't meant it that way, but the words rang in her mind.  _Loss only excuses us so long._

‘Thought we might draw out whatever was skulking in the shadows,’ the bald one said. Ser Alrik. Hawke remembered Cullen pointing him out with a sour face. She remembered his leers.

‘It’s the Champion. Meredith said…’

‘And she’s not here, is she?  _Now._ ’

The smites hit her like a blaze of debilitating pain. She blocked the first wave, but there were five and she was alone, and she had nothing to restore her energy, which was draining faster than she could think.

 _No_ , Hawke thought, through the fog that was disrupting her mind. Alrik caught her arm. The spirit blade was already gone.  _Lyrium_ , Hawke thought.  _I need_ _…_

A thought. A memory. Sliding her fingers under Cullen's plate. 

She let herself go limp. There. The powerless, bound mage. The very emblem of the Gallows. She noted the positions of each of them. One to the side, two behind, two wearing those leering, awful smiles.

Alrik laughed as she stumbled forward against him, letting her eyes roll back. He only had one hand gripping her. The other was on his sword. He didn’t care. He thought he had won.

Hawke reached out, just under the guard of his belt, and smashed the tiny lyrium vial there against the hard edge of his metal plate.

The glass sliced through her finger. The lyrium surged into her veins, into her blood, filling her with the slightest surge of power.

It was enough. Hawke struck out with the blade that appeared in her hands, glowing, pulsing, calling for vengeance. Side, behind, out and back. She was smart enough not to gloat. All around her, blood. The girl cowered on the floor, apparently just as frightened of Hawke as she had been of the templars. 

Dizzy, she sank down onto her knees, wanting to speak, to tell the child it was safe, that there was no cause for fear. Instead she knelt on the ground and tried to stabilize the heaving of her chest and gut.

There she stayed until a couple of voices roused her. She had no idea how long she had been kneeling there. Fenris had returned, with Anders, of all people, and Aveline.

'I thought you were gone,' she told the elf. Her head hurt.

He shook his head. He looked at her, trying to stand, slumping back against the cavern wall. He reached into the pack and handed her a vial, wordlessly.

Hawke's fingers were clumsy. The smites had left her disoriented. She fumbled with the cap.

Behind him, she caught a flash of blue.  _No._  

'Anders,' she started, but the change was washing over him.

The girl screamed and babbled something about demons. Justice was raging inside Anders, sending him stepping forward, and then -- before Hawke could move, drained as she was -- Justice, Anders, whatever the hell he was, lunged forward and struck her down.

'No,' Hawke gasped. 'What have you done?' Her blade was already dying in her hand, too little, too late. She knelt down by the girl's side. 'You killed her.'

A lurch, and Anders was himself again, filled with nothing but remorse. 'I didn't... I didn't mean to, I...'

'I didn't save her from templars so  _you_  could kill her,' Hawke snapped, furious. 'What were you thinking?'

'I--'

'Leave,' Hawke said. 'All of you. And give me the rest of my damn lyrium. I'm going to have some words with...  _someone._ ' She should have thanked Fenris for coming back. She didn't have the words for it. Instead she reached out and touched his arm, and after a second, he nodded.

First she searched the bodies, and found a note on Alrik that made her face go dark.

She made her way back up to the surface as the anger burned in her. _Let them come._

The tunnels stayed empty, and the exit was silent.

And because Hawke had balls bigger than any templar’s, she made her way back to the Gallows.

 

***

 

Cullen sat at his desk by candlelight, reviewing reports that never seemed to stop, reading through requisitions and orders and a river of paper that flowed onto his desk, unending.

His door flew open. To his shock, Hawke stood there, covered in blood and grime.

 _Not hers_ , he realised, and drew a breath. 'You shouldn't be here.'

Hawke opened her mouth, then seemed to think better of it and handed him the parchment she had been carrying, her face black. 

He unfolded the letter and read through it. He knew Alrik had been trying to push the plan through, and that Meredith had stopped him. It wasn’t news. They had spoken of it before. Her anger came from elsewhere.

‘Doesn’t stop there,’ she said.

‘Should I ask how you came by this?’

‘Probably shouldn’t ask,’ Hawke said. ‘Let’s just say the same person who retrieved this letter saw Ser Alrik... about to make a girl Tranquil so he could take what he wanted from her. Something she didn’t want to give him. Want me to spell it out more clearly?’

‘What?’ he said.

Her eyes narrowed. The muscles of her jaw twitched in ill-concealed rage.

‘Don’t tell me you knew about this,’ she said. ‘If Bethany had ended up in the Circle, or if I had...'

‘Of course not!’ he snapped. ‘Do you think I’d have let this happen if I had known? If you had told me...’

‘Well it  _happened,_ ’ Hawke snarled, smacking her fist down on the table. ‘Last time we spoke, you almost sounded like you think the Rite’s a good idea.’

‘I never said that,’ Cullen said, the heat rising in his own voice. ‘I would  _never_  say that. When Alrik brought it up, Meredith dismissed the suggestion immediately.’

‘You said its scope could be broadened.’

‘I said there was an argument for using it more  _instead_  of – I meant it might be better than  _killing_  those who insist on dealing with demons! Maker knows you’ve killed far more mages than I have, Hawke. If we made them Tranquil instead of resorting to such measures...’

‘Well!’ she said, putting her hands up in front of her, palms out. ‘I get it, I’m a weapon too. Going to lock me up?'

‘I’m not... I don’t...’

'Would you honestly want to undergo that ritual? Have your mind taken away?'

'Sometimes,' he said in a quiet, dead voice.

Hawke stared at him for a second.

‘Cullen. Meredith is not whom she used to be. I’ve heard that she mumbles and mutters to herself, alone in her office. You walk past it every day. Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed.’

'Her intentions are for the best,' he protested. 'She threw out Alrik’s petition for the Rite of Tranquility. She is still the Knight-Commander. The Chantry sanctions her position. We cannot simply take matters into our own hands, Hawke. The Guard-Captain would agree with me on that point.'

‘I’m... going to go. Wash the stench of Ser Alrik off my hands. For what it’s worth, I killed him. And I didn’t regret it one bit. I killed a  _templar_ , Cullen. Right here in the Gallows. So do your duty, Knight-Captain. Arrest me.’

‘Hawke, please.’

‘Here I am, walking away,’ she said. ‘And you might want to consider why you’re letting me. Doesn’t sound like you trust Meredith’s sanity enough to tell her about me, you, this --  _us_ , does it?’

She made for the door.

He actually followed her out of his office and into the small vestibule. No guards here. The Order's numbers had dwindled to the point where he hadn't seen a point wasting manpower outside his door.

He didn't want her to leave like this.

'I... should have died in the Ferelden Circle,' Cullen said. 'What happened there--I can't allow it to happen here. The Order here is so fractured I can’t let it fall apart. No matter what you think of me, Hawke, you or anyone else, everything I do is for the good of the people of Kirkwall. Including the mages. I've bent the rules for you because you keep the city from destroying itself. I trust you.'

His words failed to placate.

‘Yes? Well, I’m the richest person in all of Kirkwall. I’m the Champion. I was the only person the Arishok would even consider talking to, and if you did try to haul me off to that prison of yours, the city and all the mages in and out of the Gallows would be up in arms in a flash if I so much as called for it.’

He raised his hands, palms facing her, and shook his head, trying to calm her down. 'What happened to the girl?'

'She's dead,' Hawke said, and her voice was short.

She paused. ‘He almost had me,’ she said, and Cullen felt as though he were choking, as though a great leaden weight pressed down on his ribs.

‘Are you... all right?’ How could his voice have the right to break?

‘No,’ she said. ‘But he didn’t manage to do anything, if that’s what you’re thinking. It was bare luck that saved me. Bare luck that saved the girl, and then ruined her.’ The anger in her voice had softened into sadness and the faintest hint of guilt, winding free.

'I would have made sure she was protected, if she had come to me.'

'And? If she had spoken up and Alrik had given his word against hers, who's to say Meredith wouldn't have killed her? Tranquilized her? You think  _I'm_  blood mage trigger happy? At least I don't run around killing people just for being apostates. Shit, I’d have to start with myself.'

Cullen put his hand to his forehead. 'You've killed a hundred blood mages and abominations, Hawke. More. You _know_. There are dark rumours of what goes on within the Circle itself. The Knight-Commander is furious.' _And paranoid. And..._

Hawke sighed. Her shoulders drooped. When she looked up at him again, her face was tired, circles under her eyes drawn. 'She's still down in the tunnels. You're the Knight-Captain. Figure it out.'

***

He went deep into the tunnels, letting the flickering light of his torch guide him. Alone in the darkness, in the eerie silence. He followed the route Hawke had described. He traced the dark paths to the grotto beneath the Gallows.

There he found her, a small crumpled thing lying amongst the weeds. He knelt by her side and closed the wide, staring eyes, smoothing her hair back with his hand.

 _You know nothing of cages, Knight-Captain_.

 

***

 

'We can't let this happen,' Cullen said, leaning over the Knight-Commander’s desk. Today he was standing, too angry to sit. Meredith looked up at him, the stillness of her face masking the anger below. 'I looked through the files. The signs are there, if we look between the lines.'

'Let what happen?' Her voice was dangerously low.

'These abuses.' He was almost shouting.

'Lower your voice, Knight-Captain,' she said. 'And seat yourself.'

He did not.

'She was only a child,' he said. 'The boy, Alain, was only a child.'

'I said, sit.'

He considered her, her title, his position, all for a moment, then drew the chair out and seated himself, silent, chained by debt and duty. And he hated himself for it.

'Do you think I know nothing of what children are capable of? You dare let abominations loose on the people of Kirkwall?'

'She was innocent,' he said.

' _She_ was my sister,' Meredith said. Her eyes seemed unfocused, as though she was lost in the past, unable to see anything but that one moment that had shaped all she had become.

'Knight-Commander--'

Meredith was on her feet, her sword levelled at his throat. 'You are overstepping your authority, _boy_.'

She had never spoken to him that way before.

'I allowed you leniency. I had faith in you. And you have lost sight of what is right.' Steel, her voice was steel brittled with ice, and it would break before it ever bent.

She lowered the sword. 'You are the Knight-Captain,' she said, unconsciously echoing Hawke's words from the night before. 'Everything you are, everything you should be, everything you will ever be, you owe to the Order. And to me.'

A great weight pressed in around his chest. He was drowning in the words he could not say.

'Tell me, Cullen.' Her voice was soft again, and no less dangerous. 'What happened to Ser Alrik?'

'I confronted him,' Cullen said. 'He turned on me.' The lie rolled off his lips, for he had thought on it the whole way up from the tunnels, carrying Ella's body with him. A half-truth. Once, Alrik's fist had slammed into his face, an eternity ago.

'And I am expected to believe you fought off the rest of his dogs alone?' She had not missed that point.

'The Champion assisted me.'

'And what were you doing with her?' Even softer.

'She brought me information on these abuses,' Cullen said. 'And on... blood mages.' It was not the right thing to say. He did not know how to lie.

'You are dismissed,' the Knight-Commander said, and for a moment, he thought she was referring to the Order. He thought of Samson, groping for coppers in the dung of Lowtown.

'Knight-Commander, I--'

'Alrik outlived his usefulness,' she said, seating herself and picking up her quill, returning to her papers. 'See to it that you do not.'

As he rose to go, she said, 'You were told to stay away from the Champion.' Cold, so cold her voice.

‘I have no connection with her,’ he said, and the words had never felt so true nor so false.

Meredith held up a hand. ‘You are not to see her again. I have taken over your duties in that regard.  _I_  will watch her. I shall deal with the Champion’s offers of aid personally. If they are even legitimate.’

 

***

 

After he left, he paced the confines of his office. He had once thought it spacious. Now the walls closed around him, dark with the history they held. Dark with the report Hawke had given him, the small grave marked in the Chantry yard.

If Alrik hadn't been alone in his evil, if the abuse hadn't just been limited to him--worse, if Meredith had known--Cullen clenched his fists in his hair. He had believed. In what? A hollow, broken promise.

He threw open the door of his office and made his way towards the mage quarters. What had Hawke called it? A prison, he thought, looking around for the first time. The entire Gallows was a prison. Dark, oppressive, faint flickering threads of light clawing through narrow windows. He had never even considered it before, but now he thought about the cage he had once been kept in, and the parallels were obscene.

When he had first come to Kirkwall things had seemed necessary. Just. Inescapable. Whether it was because his views had been more extreme he couldn’t say, and the thought made his chest ache. Or perhaps they had maintained some semblance of reason. Now the faces he passed in the halls were harried and fearful. Once they had looked at him with suspicion. Now he was met with despise, mixed with dread.

 _We keep them in cages._ Meredith had told him it was necessary. He had believed her. After the Ferelden Circle, after watching people he had considered friends transform into incarnations of pure hate, he had believed they were doing the right thing.

 _I never hurt you_ , he wanted to say. But the words were meaningless.

He stayed up late into the night, candlewax dripping onto his desk, thinking how best he could convince Meredith there was another way, a better way.

And, he realised with chilling certainty, he was not sure he could. She had sent him out into the field, away from the Gallows, busied him with the administration of the island fortress, a nightmare in itself. He was barely in the Gallows itself save for when he sat walled up at his desk. Templar business. What did that mean these days?

Anger built on a dark wave. Rage rising. A clash was coming, and he was caught in the middle. He did his best to placate where he could, to make sure the more extreme elements of the Order stayed their hands. In the mess hall, the templars murmured, pointing out every little malignancy in the mages of Kirkwall, things he could not completely deny, nor sanction. Slowly the murmurs swelled into a roar, and it was all he could do to dam them up.

Like Meredith, he had thought the safety of Kirkwall’s citizens paramount. But both of them had forgotten the Order’s other reason for existence.

_They are our charges. We are sworn to keep them safe from harm. And from our own._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I think this is about as dark and miserable as this gets.
> 
>  
> 
> onward and upward! and downward! and upward again!
> 
> DAI thoughts:  
> disclaimer: I do love DAI, I think it is on the whole rather wonderful, and the whole buildup to Haven's climactic scene was done really well. I genuinely felt rather heroic at that point. And then... I don't know. I was kind of okay/ambivalent about my Trevelyan Inquisitor until Hawke showed up and I heard Jo Wyatt's world-weary voice, and then I threw my controller at the wall and had to go and play DA2 again. which is why this fic exists in the first place.
> 
> In Kirkwall we get to go through all sorts of personal tragedies with Hawke and see some major character growth (or, regression in some cases maybe you bad people). I honestly think only Solasmancers got to feel any real, haunting loss. correct me if anyone feels otherwise!
> 
> the problem with having too many non-unique player characters in this era and sector of gaming is that it's too hard/too expensive to develop fully-voiced, animated and targetted storylines and meaningful interactions relative to your character's background, so I never felt that my Inquisitor ever had any losses or sorrows, not even when losing a hand. I mean, certain other characters in other famous works lose a hand and it's their entire world ripped away from them. The Inquisitor loses a hand so late in the game that it just becomes an afterthought 'and life goes on, you already married the hot templar anyway, lose a hand, no big deal...' 
> 
> I can't think of a single moment with the Trevelyan Inquisitor that comes anywhere near the pathos of Hawke sitting in her mansion, alone with Dog, thinking of Leandra. 
> 
> Lavellans definitely got the best possibilities for heartbreaking angst.
> 
> ...until I found the DAI Hawke-quisitor blood swipe tattoo mod, anyway. :P Poor, poor Cullen.
> 
>  
> 
> discussion much welcomed! It's just that DAI's protagonist felt more like Skyrim's than Hawke, or DAO even, in which I thought the origin stories were pretty great, and varied.


	14. in the garden of the light

**CULLEN**

The Circle was breaking. He knew it. Though the cracks formed a different configuration than those that had risen from Lake Calenhad, the pattern was clear.

He ran into Hawke outside the Keep one afternoon, when she was leaving. As though he encountered a stranger, not someone he had shared mouth and heat and skin with.

'Serah Hawke,' he said, awkwardly.

'Knight-Captain.' She nodded. Her eyes were unreadable.

He was not supposed to be speaking with her. He should have nodded, passed by. Instead he reached out, touched her arm and steered her over to the side of the Keep, into the shadows.

'Hawke...' he started. 'I... We need to know where the Champion stands.'

She frowned.

'Things can't go on like this,' he said. 'The Circle is fractured.'

'You know, I noticed that the day I sailed to Kirkwall,' she said.

'Something will snap,' he tried again. 'You know things can't continue like this.'

'Ah, you see it now,' she remarked. She leaned against a nearby pillar and folded her arms across her armour. 'What do you need?'

'Will you stand with us?' he asked. _Us._ The Order.

'How can I? You're the Knight-Commander's slave,' Hawke said. 'I'm a vile apostate.'

He thought he knew what she wanted to hear. 'Stand with me.'

‘Why? I don’t owe you anything,’ Hawke said, and her voice was frosty. Like ice. Like Meredith.

‘You’re right,’ he said, quietly. ‘You don’t. I would never claim that of you.’

She seemed to be waiting for something else, but turned away. 'I have enough people pushing me one way, pulling me another.'

‘I thought we understood each other,’ he said. ‘I thought you would agree to help the Order. To maintain the peace.’

‘I’ll do as I please, how I please, when I please. Your place is in the Gallows, is it not? Where _templars_ think I should be.’

'Whatever you think of me,' Cullen said, 'I only want to keep the peace. I need your help.'

She stared at him for a moment that stretched on forever.

'I'll think about it,' she said, and detached herself from the pillar.

‘Good night, Serah Hawke,’ he said as she passed by, his voice as flat as his heart.

 

***

 

Later, he looked at the new report that lay on his desk. More cast-off decrees from Meredith's desk. Now his eyes were open. He read the words, deciphered the code, and the lines were illuminated with a dark, twisted light.

_Mage, fifteen years. Insubordinate. Dangerous. Non-compliant. Fights like a rat. Recommend the brand._

Cullen rose and made his way into the warren of cells. He knew the number.

The boy cowered in the corner when he opened the door.  _Yes, fights like a cornered rat, afraid and desperate and alone._

'K-Knight-Captain,' he stammered. 'Please don't.'

Cullen put his finger to his lips. 'I won't hurt you,' he said. 'But you have to tell me what happened.'

He already knew, even before the boy choked out his tale in half-sobs and stammers.

'Who was it?'

'I don't know, ser.' They had worn their helms.

Cullen looked around the room, seeing it for the first time.  _This is a cage. I dreamt. This is real._

He lifted the pouch of coin from his belt and pressed it into the boy's hand and put his finger to his lips again. 'Come,' he said, beckoning. 'But say nothing.'

He led the child out and down, into the tunnel Hawke had described, into the secret bowels of the Gallows. On the way he passed a templar who leered at the spectacle of the Knight-Captain with the boy in tow, flashed a knowing smile. He marked the face and the name. That was for later.

'Take this road,' he said, when they were past the worst of the rotting cloaca. 'You should be safe from here. Go to...' and he paused. 'Go to the Amell estate in Hightown and talk to the Champion. Do not say I sent you.'

The boy had no words for him, but in his eyes was a faint glint of hope, and after staring up at him silently for a moment, he turned and ran, leaving Cullen with a heart like lead.

He turned and walked the long path back.

_Mage attempted escape. Neutralized._

A polite way of saying dead _._

 

***

 

A few days later, he received a missive with her seal on it. It sat on the edge of his desk, studiously ignored for the better part of a morning until he finally gave in with a curse and ripped it open.

It was short, and to the point.

_It's been a while. H_

The old jolt shot through him like lightning. Carefully, he folded the little parchment back up into quarters and set it back on his desk.

His hand reached for his quill. He had no idea what to write. He knew the words burning in his heart. He knew he could not say them.

His fingers stopped. He had no right to answer that. He could offer her nothing. He was allowed nothing.

He took the note and balled it slowly in his hand, and threw it in the fire.

 

*******

 

He kept seeing her now, at functions. Nobles lingered around her, men thronging her with offerings of flowers, jewellery, favours. They kissed her hands, even her cheeks, and Hawke smiled and charmed and basked in all the attention.

Those nights were the worst. Since Meredith hardly ever left the Gallows, it fell on the Knight-Captain to fulfil her duties, particularly the ones she disliked the most. So Cullen endured mindless speeches, the babble of courtiers, forced discussions about the Order and whether they could grant certain favours, entertain private requests. All of which Cullen fobbed off politely, firmly and with no small amount of exasperation.

Hawke was always busy being seen with Lord Such-and-Such or Marquis Whomsoever, and when their eyes met by accident, across a crowded dance hall, she glanced away.

Under the steel plate, Cullen was nothing, a farmer’s son. Templars seldom married, and only with sanction from the Chantry, and what he wanted was an impossibility above all others. He had not cared, not since Kinloch. Yet despite all reason he had found something worth wanting, and it was the one thing he would never have.

Hawke received proposals from all the lords of the Free Marches. He knew it. She was the talk of Kirkwall. He had no idea whom she saw, or how much of it was rumour, for he did not speak with her anymore.

*******

 

Time passed. The days dragged on. He was trapped in mountains of reports that kept appearing on his desk. He had no time for anything but paper. The reports led him on a wild goose chase, suggesting he should talk to this templar, that mage, that someone had made such a complaint about so-and-so.

Every single time he brought someone to his office for safe questioning, they said nothing, professed not to know what he was talking about.  _Nothing happening here, ser._

He sent the few templars he trusted to watch over the Circle, watched Orsino as much as he could himself. The First Enchanter had been behaving oddly of late. He had always been reasonable, if somewhat weak. Now he seemed on edge, always railing about something or other. There were times when Cullen had to step in and keep him from forcing his way into Meredith's office. They were both so volatile he feared every new confrontation between them.

Meredith, perhaps not quite believing him about Hawke, seemed to be doing her best to keep him at his desk, throwing down paper walls to keep him occupied and away from her.

But she couldn't stop Hawke.

 

 

**IN THE GARDEN OF THE LIGHT**

 

Late one evening, Cullen went to the Chantry, knelt before the altar and prayed that the words would banish the thoughts from his mind. All the thoughts.

‘Blessed are they who stand before the corrupt and wicked and do not falter.’

In the Circle he had repeated the words of the Chant endlessly, until his throat ran dry and burned, and his words were inaudible. Still he had formed the words with his lips and clung to them with every last remnant of his own will. As long as he said them he could not fall.

‘Blessed are the peacekeepers, the champions of the just.’

Ten times, twenty times, a hundred. They would keep him safe. Just once more. He had to say them again. or... No. He would not think of that.

Next to him, a voice said, sweet and low, ‘Blessed are the righteous, the lights in the shadow.’

He turned, shocked. He didn’t want to see her. He desperately longed to.

Hawke stood there, her hands neatly folded in front of her. Her eyes were clear as they regarded him. Of all people, he hadn’t expected the words of the Chant of Light to ever cross her lips.

He stayed, knowing he should go. Wanting to be—what? To be something he could never be? To forget everything? Why didn’t he move away from her and let her be free of him?

It was not lust that drew him to her, not the song of her flesh and lips and eyes. It was the very nature of her being, that which replaced what was missing in him.

She wore her usual armour. She was covered in soot and dust and blood. She was as radiant as any of the candles in the chapel. ‘I… thought I might find you here.’

‘I’ve missed you,’ he said simply. He was no liar.

‘Please,’ she said. ‘Won’t you walk with me? In the garden.’

He wanted to say no. It would be safer for everyone if he returned to his office at the Gallows and lost himself in his work, abandoned foolish, impossible dreams.

Instead he followed her outside.

She beckoned him over to one of the benches in the courtyard. There they were alone. His heart hammering, he seated himself by her.

‘What made you come? Ah... here, I mean.’

‘Someone keeps sending mages to my house,’ she said in a casual voice. ‘They won’t tell me whom it is. But I had my suspicions.’

‘I can’t think who,’ he managed.

She smiled. They sat in silence for a while.

'I wanted to ask you something,' he said. The words were laboured.

She blinked and said nothing. It was a silent invitation for him to continue.

'In my office. When we... Did you... did you want it?’ His voice wavered.                       

She seemed puzzled. 'Of course,' she said.

'Did I... hurt you?'

It took her a while to process the question, but finally her frown lifted into comprehension. 'Maker, no.'

He had been holding his breath in, and finally he let it out.

'Why? What's wrong?'

'Nothing,' he said, for he couldn't possibly explain it. 'I'm... I'm glad.'

She caught his hand, pressed it to her lips, lowered it. 'In another life,' she said. 'It would have been fun.'

Maker help him, it hurt.

She paused.

'If you ever want to talk,' she said slowly. Perhaps she sensed some of the pain in him.

He was Cullen, sad and silent, unable to voice the things he wanted to.

_No._

'In the Circle,' he said, slowly, hesitantly, 'I was imprisoned when the Tower was overrun by demons.'

He still couldn't quite bring himself to discuss the exact details. Instead he told her of the cage, how they'd shown him the worst in himself while they made him kneel in all that remained of his companions. All that was true. Told her how he saw himself. Told her why he had run from her, like a coward.

Hawke closed her hand over his. 'You never hurt me.' She traced a line over his palm with her thumb. 'Nor anyone.'

She cracked a grin. 'Well,' she said, 'maybe that Wilfrog boy.'

'But...'

'People die,' she said. 'They don't come back.' How many people had she lost? And the manner in which she'd lost her mother, so recently. He didn't know what to say. All the words flitting through his mind seemed pathetic.

She put her other hand on his. 'You didn't die,' she said. 'You came back. You stayed you.'

He took her hand and pressed it between his own, that last fraying thread connecting him to the shroud of reality. 'How did... How is it you know the Chant?'

'Oh, come on,' Hawke said, poking him in the ribs. 'I'm not a  _complete_  heathen. Good girls go to Chant.'

'You're a good girl?' he asked her, starting to smile despite himself.

'I am a  _very_  good girl,' Hawke said. 'I killed the Arishok. I saved your life. How many girls in Kirkwall can claim that?'

He smiled. 'Just one. The very best.'

 

**SAMSON**

 

Cullen walked the streets of Kirkwall a few days later, lost in thought. Chantry services had gone on later than he had expected. Rain bounced off his armour and splashed down around his feet, pooling in the crevices of the cobblestones.

A vehement argument had broken out in the halls of worship that night. People were getting restless, hungry for blood, fearful of mages and qunari and the unknown. There was talk of blood mage covens. Cullen didn't doubt their existence, but with even the slightest happening attributed to blood magic, the peace of the city was tenuous.

He hadn't seen Hawke since she had come to see him at the Chantry, but it was inevitable, really, with Meredith's current state of mind. He had taken his leave of her reluctantly, but since then, after opening his past to her, he had felt shriven. Becoming whole.

Was Kirkwall home? No. Never. But there was nowhere else he could call his. They were building a plinth, raising a statue to the Champion, down by the docks. The scaffolding made him smile when he passed it.

A shadow appeared from around the corner, and Cullen tensed until he recognised the distinctive armour.

'Hawke,' he said. 'Why are you out here?' He smiled.

'Bandits,' she said. 'Blood magic. The usual. Yourself?'

'A visit to the Chantry,' he said. 'Things are... tense.'

'They're always tense.'

He shook his head. 'Not like this.'

‘No,’ she admitted. 'I went to see Meredith and Orsino, screaming at each other. Things are shifting, Cullen. They're going to tear the Circle apart. They sounded like children squabbling.'

'I know,' he said. 'I'm doing my best.'

She touched his arm. 'I know.'

'I'll walk you home,' he said.

'Even though you know I don't need protection,' she remarked. 'That's sweet of you. But Meredith will kill you if she sees you at my door. Besides,' and she shot him that old quirk of a grin, 'perhaps  _I_  should be walking you home.'

He laughed. 'Goodnight,' he said, longing to pull her into his arms, knowing he could not, but she was already gone.

‘I saw,’ a voice said from the shadows. Cullen almost drew his blade until he placed the voice, cracked and broken though it was. One he hadn’t heard in years. An eternity ago, before he’d taken his position as Knight-Captain, a man he had roomed with. He had stopped leaving the lyrium, after it seemed the worst of the withdrawal had passed.

‘Samson.’

‘I saw you with her,’ Samson giggled. Maker, the stench on his breath, of alcohol and rotting gums. His eyes rolled from side to side, touched on Cullen briefly and darted away again.

‘The Champion,’ he continued. ‘She’s a  _mage_.’ He grinned. A few of his teeth were missing. The rest were yellowed with decay. ‘What would little Meredith say if she knew?’

Cullen had never heard anyone call Meredith little before.

‘Oh,’ Samson leered, ‘don’t worry. I won’t tell her. I’m no rat, not like you.’

‘I...’

' _I_...  _I_... 'I couldn’t lie, Samson. I had to tell the truth. I’m so honest.'' The words shot from Samson’s mocking mouth. ''Just not when it comes to myself.''

He lurched closer, and Cullen forced himself to hold his ground. ‘Have you told her how nice it is in the Circle? Did you tell her – about Maddox? Does she love it when you pin her down and do the things to her that you scream and sob about in the night?’

‘Not another word,’ Cullen said, the hate in his voice surprising himself.

‘Oh,’ Samson said, lifting a finger, half-curled, and pointing. ‘You  _love_  her.’ He made the word ring with filth.

Cullen almost struck him. He held his hands in fists at his side, and bit back his anger.

‘You are not... yourself,’ he said.

‘Fuck you, Knight-Captain,’ Samson said, and he staggered away into the night. ‘Pick a fucking side.’

 

 

**THE DAY BEFORE WILDFIRE**

 

Thrask died the next day, out on the Coast, betrayed by all his sympathies, murdered by those he had sworn to protect, betraying those he had sworn to obey.

The Knight-Captain had sent the Champion a simple letter requesting a meeting on the high spires of the Keep. Templar business. Nothing more. But as he left, he took something from his drawer and slipped it into his pocket. A small thing, almost a trifle.

She stood with him by the parapets, looking at him, her brow crinkled with worry. An odd expression on her.

'Thrask is dead.' she said, her voice low. There were dark circles under her eyes. 'I failed him.' 

'He failed himself,' Cullen said. The words were bitter in his mouth.

'Tomorrow things will change forever,' Hawke said. 'The Knight-Commander demands my presence.'

She turned away from him and stared down over the city below.

'You don't believe in me,' Cullen said.

He needed her belief. He needed it, the one thing that made it possible for him to face his duties and the schism that tore at him. Meredith pulled one way, the Circle another. Hostilities were at an all-time high. He tried to placate everyone and placated no-one. And worse, he had finally begun to unravel the web of abuses in the Gallows. Too little. Too late.

'Do  _you_  believe in me?' There was a despair in her voice that had never been there before. She turned back and looked up at him.

'Yes,' he said simply, 'I do.' It was the only truth. She was the only thing in Kirkwall he believed in. The one person he knew would be there for him if he asked, always.

She fell silent. He saw her eyelids flutter. Puzzled, he stepped closer to her, tilting her face up with his hand. Hawke turned away for a moment, and when she looked back, her face was grim, but composed, and only the thin ghost of moisture on her cheek lingered.

'I have something for you,' he said. He drew a thin silver chain from his pocket. He had taken it from the drawer it had lain in, untouched. At the end of it hung a small vial. Her phylactery.

She blinked.

'I never used it,' he said. Once, he had believed magic was to serve, to be harnessed and controlled. Now he only knew he owed her this. He opened his hand and let the silver vial slide into hers.

He thought she might shatter it against the stones of the wall. Instead she looped it around her slender neck and set the clasp, hiding it under her collar.

He held out his hand to her. She pressed her hands to his, saying nothing, her brow furrowed.

‘What’s wrong?’ he asked. He had never seen her like this.

‘I’m afraid,’ she said. ‘That I’ll fail tomorrow.’

That shocked him. Hawke feared nothing. She had never shown anything but courage to the point of recklessness. And she had no qualms about speaking her mind, to whomsoever she wanted.

‘Why? You’re the Champion,’ he said, smiling slightly. ‘You’re _you_.’

‘I didn’t ask for that,’ she said. ‘I didn’t ask for any of this. I just couldn’t ever walk away.’

All around them, on the battlements of the Keep, the wind wailed, and the rain stung his cheeks. Troops surged in the city below. Aveline’s guards, rallying, waiting for the storm. Cullen saw all those things and noticed none of them. Instead his eyes fixed on hers. Tomorrow the city would stand, or crumble. Kirkwall would bleed. Tomorrow, he would fight, and live, or die. Half the nobles had fled the city. She would not.

‘That,’ he said, lifting her hand to his lips, ‘is why I love you.’

To which he had the satisfaction of seeing the Champion of Kirkwall turn an incredibly bright red.

‘Er,’ she stammered. ‘I, er.’

He didn’t need words from her. Instead he stepped nearer still, until she seemed to melt into him. Whose arms wrapped around whom first? He couldn’t say. It didn’t matter. He smoothed the unruly hair back from her face, traced the scar across her nose. When he kissed her, it felt right.

For a moment they were young and all was simple, two hearts reduced to a single beat, parted lips and hot breath and his hand against the curve of her waist, her forehead pressed against his, shoulders rising and falling with the uncertainty of desire. Then the beat broke, and the moment splintered, and that beat bifurcated into the drums of war, the city divided.

‘I should go,’ he murmured.

When she drew away from him he felt none of the old anxieties. He merely looked upon her and felt his heart lift. Tomorrow, to the dawn. To the duties of the Order, an old, ancient thing that went deeper than Meredith, further than Orsino, to the very roots of his own soul. The first tenet, the first chant, the real meaning behind the words and the regalia, the truth that had stirred a young boy’s heart all those long years ago. To protect.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and now, please think of whom Cole's 'you stayed you' words really came from the next time you play DA:I. #cawkewall
> 
> also if you'd like some suitably angsty music, I played 'mesh-it's gone' a lot while poking at this. the lyrics are so apt for this lunar sea of angst. also 'the way i feel' which is pretty much Cullen's theme.
> 
> thanks as always!


	15. knight-commander

**HAWKE**

 

The day was progressing at a horrendous clip when Hawke saw her.

 _Bethany._  Her heart gladdened. Her sister, safe. Here. Was she still angry? But Bethany rushed towards her, threw her arms around her neck. The blue armour of the Wardens clattered against Hawke, and it was a sweet sound, a blessed sound, the best sound Hawke had ever heard.

'Sister,' Bethany cried. 'I've come to help.'

'You shouldn't have come. It's not safe.'

'I'm your sister,' Bethany said. 'How could I not? Besides, I'm a Warden now.' But she seemed so vulnerable, standing there.  _Everyone I love ends up hurting or dead._

'Beth,' she whispered. 'I'm sorry. I should never have taken you to the Deep Roads.'

Bethany raised her eyes to her. 'But it was my choice. I chose, sister. For the first time.'

Hawke shook her head, though Bethany put her hand on her shoulder.

'I don't have to hide anymore,' Bethany said, her fingers exerting the gentlest of pressure. 'I have a purpose.'

'Fighting for your life? Killing, Beth? It should have been me. It's not the life you were made for.'

'Perhaps it is,' Bethany said, and her eyes were clear, and Hawke exhaled.

They progressed through the courtyard as things fell apart. Mages, fleeing from templars. Templars, fleeing from mages. Blood, guts and screams. Inhuman shrieks.  _Burn it all, Anders_ , Hawke wanted to say.  _You started this. End it._

Round the corner, she saw Cullen. He stood next to Meredith, arguing with her, his hands reaching out, imploring. He had already stopped her from killing mages who had thrown themselves to her mercy, earlier that day. Hawke didn't want to think about how many had died before he had found her.

Meredith was babbling about ruling in fear. Hawke didn't have time to listen to whatever she was saying. She had to find Orsino, had to quell the madness.  _They're both insane._  Hawke caught Cullen's gaze, shrugged, told Meredith she'd best prepare.  _Knight-Captain, keep her in check,_  she prayed.

‘Why are you supporting  _her_?’ Bethany asked, after they had moved on. 'How can you contemplate supporting the Right?'

‘I’m not,’ Hawke said.

Bethany’s eyes shifted sideways, although the Knight-Commander and her captain were gone.

‘Is this about him?’ she asked softly.

‘No,’ Hawke said. ‘But thanks for assuming I’d act on behalf of an entire city just because he looks good in a suit of platemail.’

Cullen had questioned the Right of Annulment. It had surprised her to hear those words coming from his mouth, to see him standing against his commanding officer. Surprised her, for part of her had feared otherwise, even though the other part had known it.

Bethany sighed. ‘Then why not stand with the mages, sister? Have you forgotten what we are?’

‘I’m reminded of that every day,’ Hawke said. She sighed. ‘This is the way. The Order is far more organised than the mages in the Circle here. When the Chantry comes down, do you think they’ll allow the mages any succour if they even manage to survive the coming battle? I have one chance to quell this madness.’

She shook her head. ‘Besides, Bethany...’ These, the words she didn’t know whether she should hold to herself.

Her sister didn’t seem to understand. ‘But...’

 _I chose,_  Bethany had said.

The words rushed out of her like knives. ‘Orsino knew, he  _knew_  Quentin was a blood mage, and he supplied Quentin with the information he needed to...’

Bethany’s face went white. ‘No...’

‘Yes,’ Hawke said. ‘And for that, I’ll never stand with him. I would kill him today if I could. The Circle is a mess thanks to his foolishness. Our mother is dead because of his leniency.’

‘But... imagine if they had thrown you in the Circle, sister.’ Bethany was strangely resolute. Hawke looked at her.  _Little sister, all grown up._

‘I know,’ Hawke said, with a sigh. ‘But for all her failings, Meredith never tried to put me there, did she?’ She put her hand on her sister’s shoulder, touched a finger under her chin. ‘For better or worse, Beth. This is all I’ve got. I can fix this. I'll keep you safe.’

'You always have,' Bethany said, echoing her sister's sigh as they lingered in the lie, and wrapped her fingers around Hawke's hand with the gentlest of squeezes.

 

 

Hawke's thoughts turned to the evening before, when Cullen had found her standing on the parapets of the Keep. There they stood, looking down over the city, spired in stone, bannered in blood. Cullen had turned to her, his eyes steady.

'I do,' he had said, and his hand went out to brush her cheek. His skin against hers, the warmth of his touch, his lips dipping to touch her forehead, till all the motes of her skin were inflamed.

'I always did,' he said, pressing his forehead to hers.

The sun crashed below the horizon. In darkness, Hawke saw the tattered remnants of her mother, saw the ogre bring a fist crashing down on Carver. Bethany, face mottled with blight. Wardens taking her away.

The darkness swelled. She reached for something tangible, an anchor to bind her to what was real, and at the heart of everything, saw herself.

 

 

**KNIGHT-COMMANDER**

 

 _Kill the Champion_. Meredith's words rang in the dead air.

Duty. False commands. A broken circle, tattered chains. 

The Order. It had been created with valiant goals. To protect and serve. Petty bickering between templars and mages, the squabbles between Meredith and Orsino, his own pathetic fears about little rules and their infractions -- none of these mattered. They had a duty to make things better, and if it demanded the reform of the entire Circle, so let it be.

As Meredith drew a blade forged from pulsating red lyrium from her scabbard, he stepped back in shock, as did the other templars.

Only Hawke stood her ground.  _She_ did not falter. Instead she drew her own blade, humming through the air, lambent and pure.

Without thinking, Cullen stepped forward and put himself between Meredith and Hawke, drawing his sword. It was not love that moved him. No, he drew his sword for an old, ancient ideal that was larger than the both of them.

'This is not what the Order stands for,' he said, finding his words, reaffirming them to himself even as he told the Knight-Commander to stand down. He had been sent to Kirkwall for a reason, and in that moment he found it. Putting faith in his own authority. Telling her to relinquish her position.

She did nothing of the sort. Behind her, Hawke’s mouth opened in surprise.

Meredith railed at him even as he regathered his composure, called forth a stream of invective. He hardly cared. He had been despised for years. As for names and words -- he had heard the worst of them in his dreams, from his own lips.

A profound sense of calm started to rise in him, replacing the harried insecurities and paranoid obsessions that had turned him into a shallow husk, a shade of a man. He was thirteen, on his knees in the Chantry, letting the Chant fill him with old dreams and new belief. He was twenty, hollow with anger, watching them brand Maddox, turn Samson away. He was twenty-five, holding Hawke back from the edge of the chasm, refusing to let her go, even as he fell into the blue expanse of her eyes. He was twenty-eight, standing between the Knight-Commander and an apostate. 

_Who are you?_

The words he said for Hawke were words he said for himself. In the end, he had not needed her reassurances, but his own forgiveness.  _You stayed you_.

He was Cullen, here, now.

‘You’ll have to go through me.’ Her words. His voice.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Hawke, her lips curving into a small, secret smile.

And then the Gallows broke into madness. Statues came to life, lumbered down from their ancient pedestals, came swinging with metal limbs at what was left of the troops in the Gallows. Cullen cried a rally.  _Stand and hold. Do not falter._

As in the moment when she had fought and slain the Arishok, Hawke stood like a vanquishing goddess, the veil of wisecracks utterly gone. She was deadly serious now. She raised her staff and planted it in the ground in front of Meredith, and suddenly it too became that glowing blade that Cullen had seen a hundred times before. Now it matched Meredith’s red blade even as the Knight-Commander brought it crashing down on her, before Cullen could get to her to block it.

Their swords hummed, one crystalline, glowing an impure, carnal red, the other pure and bright.

Cullen turned away. His battle was for the safety of those around him. Hawke had hers. And he believed.

At the end of it, Hawke had Meredith worn down and desperate, and in that moment what was left of the Knight-Commander called on all the corrupt power of red lyrium to give her what was due. Even Hawke’s sheer force of will was fading, though she held her blade high, though her companions rallied, ragged and worn. How much lyrium had Hawke taken? She was practically bleeding it. There was none left.

Hawke went for the Knight-Commander, who was still screaming for the lyrium, her words blending into an indecipherable scream. To Cullen's horror, cracks opened in Meredith's skin, a wave of vile scarlet energy rushing through them, imbuing Meredith with awful, raw power. Hawke stumbled back, throwing her last, fading barrier up.

The Knight-Commander was a living conduit, her form changing, pulsing, glowing with that unholy light. She lurched forward, reaching for Hawke, and all the fissures in her seemed to split open. The light ripped her apart as she screamed. Her body burned from within with a flame so hot that they all staggered away from it, so bright that he was forced to shield his eyes with his hand.

When he opened them, nothing remained but a smouldering corpse, down on its knees. He could take no joy in that victory. Once, she had taken him in. Given him a place. He looked away.

Hawke turned to him. After all that, even with her hair caked with blood and sweat and her face stained with filth, she cracked a crooked smile. He loved her for it. He loved her.

‘Congratulations on your promotion, Knight-Commander.’

‘Champion,’ Cullen said simply, holding her gaze.

Then he knelt before her, and named her Viscountess of Kirkwall.

 

***

 

‘Were you really going to arrest me?’ Hawke stood by the charred thing Meredith had become, poking it with the tip of her staff, yanking her staff away as the wooden tip began to smoke.

‘No,’ Cullen said. ‘I just didn’t want Meredith to hurt you. It was the only suggestion she would have listened to.’

‘So you would have sprung me out of jail afterwards, is that right?’ She wrinkled her nose and stepped away from the burnt figure on the ground, the last supplicant in a field of broken statues, that last image of the bound.

He shook his head. ‘I wouldn't have let you go in the first place. Hawke, this day was... madness. I stood with Meredith most of the day, trying to rein her back. I thought I could stay her from her course. I failed her.’

Hawke laughed. ‘Meredith failed herself, Cullen.’

‘You never knew her as herself,’ he said. ‘There was once something good inside her.’ He took her hand, pressed it in his own, watched her expression change to something of curiosity.

He shook his head again, gold curls ruffled by the wind. 'I failed so many people. I should have told her to stand down years ago.'

'You would have been overthrown,' Hawke said. 'Today was the day, Cullen. I think we did just fine.'

'Things seem so clear to you,' he said softly, stroking her fingers with his own. 'I envy you for that.'

Standing behind them, Aveline cleared her throat. 'I hate to interrupt,' she said, 'but duty calls.'

Cullen smiled. 'So it always does.' And he opened his hand and let Hawke go.

 

**AND KIRKWALL, BRIEFLY**

In the wake of the incident at the Gallows, Hawke found herself forced to adapt to her new responsibilities of Viscountess. The first observation she made to Varric, lips curled into a sneer, was that they were pretty much the same responsibilities she’d had since stepping off the boat to Kirkwall all those years ago. Take care of people who can’t take care of themselves. Deal with idiots. Kill blood mages and bandits. Rinse. Repeat.

What was different was that this time around, Hawke had to attend functions and talk to more people she detested, and deal with bureaucrats and other forms of human refuse. She spent a good hour discussing with Varric the question of whether spiders were worse than politicians. They settled on the compromise that they were equally horrid, but that spiders were easier to dispose of. She yawned through pointless councils and flicked little spears of electricity at the spiders in their corners, wishing she could bolt the councillors too.

What else was different was that the Knight-Commander of Kirkwall seemed to be around a lot more than he needed to be. He went out of his way to bring reports he could have easily sent someone else to bring. He requested meetings, officially for the deep discussion of Kirkwall’s tenuous future. He brought wine. They drank together. He never went any further. If anyone noticed, they said nothing, for the people of Kirkwall loved their Champion, and tolerated the new Knight-Commander.

Hawke pondered the steady mark of his regard.

 

**CULLEN**

 

When he showed up at one of the city’s tedious balls, people murmured. The Knight-Commander, at a function. He had been seen stepping out before, but not since he had taken up his new position, and certainly not dressed in a simple Ferelden jacket, trimmed with a hint of fur.

It had seemed appropriate.

He had received the invitation that morning. Normally, he would have tossed it into the fireplace, but the crest on the front of the envelope had stopped him immediately. He knew that symbol. Amell. Over the top of it, a bold, vaguely bird-like scribble. Her  _real_  symbol.

He waited for the Viscountess to arrive. He could never quite reconcile her with this setting. She seemed so out of place amongst the trappings of the court. She was meant for the wilderness, for flight.

Instead she drifted down the stairs, all eyes on her. The dress she wore made him instantly uncomfortable. He remembered it very well. White, translucent in parts, clinging to the curves of her body.

He wondered if she had dressed like that to send him mad, and the moment he thought it, he knew. By the reactions of the crowd, he was far from alone.

Hushed voices, intakes of breath.  _The Champion is beautiful. The Viscountess is exquisite._  But he had known that all along, hadn't he? In plate and mail and the rich smell of her leathers, with blood smeared across her face and her staff in her hand. Gasping his name. Pulling him in. Saving him, again and forever. Always.

Hawke picked up the skirts of her dress and marched over to where he stood, half-hidden by a row of peacocking dancers.

‘I didn’t know you liked dancing so much, Knight-Commander.’ She used the title when she wanted to aggravate him, which was often.

‘I never said I didn’t,’ Cullen said. ‘Just not with the wrong people. You look…really,’ and here he coughed and laughed nervously, ‘um. Nice.’

‘Hmm,’ was all Hawke said as she dragged him onto the dancefloor.

‘People will talk,’ he protested.

‘They’re already talking,’ she told him.

‘But…’

‘I’m done talking,’ she said.

He put his arm around her waist and his hand around hers, and the weight of his gaze made her look away. If he was not mistaken, there was a slight flush on her cheeks. There was no armour between them. Her heart beat, close to his.

‘You know,’ she whispered, ‘I’ve a habit of killing things. I have very bad manners. I could never be a proper lady, sitting by the hearth with my needles.’

Cullen snorted. ‘Do you think,’ he said, squeezing her hand, ‘that if I wanted that, I would be standing here?’

‘I suppose not,’ she said with a wry smile. ‘I hate balls,’ she added, as she twirled under his arm.

‘Under duress, I'll confess I’m not fond of them either,’ he said.

‘Why did you come?’

‘You’re always getting into trouble.’

Hawke laughed.

‘I should walk you home,’ he told her. ‘Make sure you don’t accidentally kill any bandits.’

‘It’s never accidental,’ she told him. ‘I’ve paid my dues for tonight. Let’s go.’

'You've been here for five minutes.'

'That's a pity,' she said. 'They can find another bloody Viscountess.'

‘Hawke,’ Cullen said as he walked her to her estate, ‘I, er. I wanted to ask you something.’

She had been looking at him already, but raised an eyebrow.

‘You stood for Meredith, even though you knew she was insane. Why?’

Perhaps it wasn’t the question she had been expecting.

'I just wanted to be Viscount,' she told him.

He gave her an even look.

‘Orsino,’ she said. ‘Quentin. He aided him in his sick research. My mother would be alive today if not for Orsino’s misguided support. He knew, and he didn’t stop him.’

He reached out and squeezed her arm. ‘I’m sorry.’

‘It’s fine,’ she said. ‘Why do you ask?’

He shook his head. ‘I’ve been reviewing all the things Meredith had in her office. Missives, her log entries, plans. If I were a mage, I wouldn’t have trusted the Order either.’

His hand was still on her arm.

‘No?’ she asked, putting her hand over his. He tensed before relaxing and taking it, pressing her fingers between his.

‘What I mean is, I just wanted to thank you for your support. I…’

'The other reason,' she said. 'You. I thought you would pull through. Because of what you said before. Because you're you.'

'Oh, I... er.'

‘Cullen?’

‘Yes?’

‘You are absolutely horrible at this.’

‘At…’

Hawke put her finger over his mouth as she closed the distance between them. Then she replaced her finger with her lips.

Cullen froze for a second, and then he reprised her kiss with an urgent ardour.

‘I,’ he began, pulling away briefly.

‘Why can't you stop talking?’ Hawke asked, but she was smiling.

'I meant what I said before,' he said. 'I don't want just... You know, ah...'

'Sex,' Hawke filled in helpfully.

'Er... right. Er, anyway, I, oh, Maker. This isn't coming out right.'

'You should have stopped talking when I told you to,' she said.

'I want...'

'Cullen, for the love of the Maker, shut up.' Hawke pulled his head down to hers so their foreheads were touching. 'I'll wait as long as you want.'

'But I...'

'It's fine,' she said.

'But...' he persisted. Hawke rolled her eyes. He tilted her chin up to him. 'But Hawke, what is it  _you_  want?'

'I want you to be happy,' she said, and kissed him. 'Go home, Knight-Commander. I'll see you tomorrow.'

Just like that, Cullen found himself automatically waving and turning to go as the door shut behind him. He hadn't actually wanted to go. He had... but it was too late, and now he had been told to go home, and...

He groaned. He wanted to knock on her door and tell her he...

Tell her what?  _Er, well, actually, I do want... I've been thinking about nothing else for the last few years. Ever since it... ah... things... started working again, I've been... practising... with... myself... oh, Maker. I mean, I want to... with you, that is..._ He could feel his face heating up.  _But not just that... I don't want it if you don't want..._

It was terrible. He realized he had been vacillating for a full five minutes, paralysed by idiocy.

He sighed as he stood looking up at the elaborate marble pillars of the old Amell estate, wondering at the events that had brought him to know two of the scions of that strangely-gifted line. Wondering, too, at the changes that had him standing there, the taste of her mouth on his, conjuring dreams of the days that would follow. They had a city to build together, after all.

Cullen smiled, and went home.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> zomg fanart from the awesome raven-wilde! i'm so touched anyone would spend time making art based on anything I wrote. *TREASURES*
> 
> the world needs more cawke fanart!  
> http://raven-wilde.tumblr.com/post/144394508921/scene-from-in-kirkwall  
> raven-wilde's main tumblr: http://raven-wilde.tumblr.com
> 
> footnote:  
> that's correct I pretty much wrote a lightsaber battle (every time I play knight-enchanter and use spirit blade in DAI I just start thinking 'lightsaberrrrr' to myself and grinning like a fool). #MereSith


	16. and so...

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> 'You're a terrible judge of character,' Hawke said. 'You hang out with too many mages.'
> 
> 'I don't hang out with them enough,' he said. 'At least, one of them.' The words were light. The way he said them was anything but. He had spent a long night thinking about... things. About what he wanted.
> 
>  
> 
> Cullen finally figures out the best way for him to heal.
> 
> Hawke makes a decision.

On the morrow, the somewhat-reluctant Viscountess of Kirkwall paid a visit to the Knight-Commander at his office in the Gallows.

Cullen had requisitioned greenery for the courtyard, replacing the empty pits where tortured statues had once stood. Making it a kinder place for all those under his care. Slowly, the heavy pall of fear and oppression had begun to lift. The grilled gates were open. He had made a declaration that those who wished to flee were free to go, that those who wanted the Circle's protection would have it. Some had left. Many had stayed, put their faith in him.

Now he stood looking down at the courtyard with her, his arm around her waist.  _How we can change,_  he thought.

'It looks better,' she remarked.

'I thought the place could do with a breath of fresh air,' he said. 'Perhaps it needs more apostates running around, blasting spiders to bits.' He smiled at her.

'You're a terrible judge of character,' Hawke said. 'You hang out with too many mages.'

'I don't hang out with them enough,' he said. 'At least, one of them.' The words were light. The way he said them was anything but. He had spent a long night thinking about... things. About what he wanted.

There it was. That grin on her face again. The one that made his pulse race. 'So you do have a sense of humour, Knight-Commander.' She reached out and prodded his arm playfully.

'How are things with you?' she asked.

He waved his hands. ‘Exactly as you’d expect. I’m putting into motion reforms that we—I should have started a long time ago. Oh, and…’ He sighed.

‘And?’

‘Meredith’s sword. The pieces have vanished from the vault.’

Hawke put her hand on his arm. ‘That’s something we can worry about another day.’

‘I’ve heard reports. Rebellion fomenting, violence on the increase, both mages and templars participating in bloodshed.’

Hawke fell silent. When she finally spoke again, she said, ‘What did I start?’

‘Nothing,’ he said. ‘We brought about an end to a beginning others forged. Mages and templars both.’  _And the Chantry's chains,_  he wanted to say, but he was not ready for that. Not yet.

'I wanted to say something,' he said, resting his forehead against hers. 'I have to. This peace we have is tenuous at best, Hawke. You're the Viscountess now, but still an apostate. I don't know what will happen when the Chantry comes storming down here.'

Her eyes flickered away and back. 'What will you do?' Her voice was soft. 'What will they do to you? You made me Viscountess. People will ask questions.'

'I'll stand with you,' he said. 'Whatever happens.' He reached out his hands to her and added, softly, 'They'll have to go through me.'

Hawke took his hands in hers, her fingers stroking the backs of his hands, so softly they felt like down, like feathers. 

'You should leave,' she said, her voice quiet. 'Go some place safe.'

Cullen thought of freedom, a horizon drawn across an open sky. He looked out over the gardens where the children played. She followed his gaze. She smiled, but the curve of her mouth was bittersweet.

She eyed him. ‘You’ve changed.’

‘I have,’ he said.

He leaned forward and kissed her. He ran his hand down her neck, over her body. Tracing her contours, so dear, adored. Her eyes widened in surprise.

He stood up and sat her on the edge of his desk, stripping the armour off her. Far less buckles than his own. Hawke did nothing to help, just sat and watched him, oddly serious for once.

Finally he had her down to her undergarments. Like the most intoxicating gift, ribbons unravelling under his hands. He pulled at the laces of her bodice until she came undone and he was kissing her soft skin. First her neck, then her breasts, and then he was kneeling on the floor, looking up at her, and she made a noise that was between a moan and a sigh, and let him slide her legs apart.

The last scrap of cloth did not take long to remove, though his hands shook a little as he loosed the ties and let them fall, unveiling the last of her. Hawke looked down at him, her breath coming a little faster, a little uneven.

He reached up and knotted his hand in hers, feeling her fingers close around his, and then he bent his head into the crook of her thighs and tasted her.

Then she guided him, saying  _here_ , or  _yes,_   _there_ , or pressing the back of his head, pulling him closer into the warmth of her body while he worshipped her with his tongue and dragged his lips across her skin until she gave a long shudder and a yelp. Her hand clenched on his.

Another soft cry and another followed, and with every little gasp and moan she made, Cullen felt... healed. Closer to whole. When she whispered his name, he felt the pall of all the long years lift, until he was no longer that empty dead thing. His heart was afire. Oh, but to hear her make the noises she was making, to know that he was capable of inducing pleasure instead of pain.

Hawke finally pushed him away gently after a violent shudder.

'I didn't expect you to be any good at this,' she said, breath still ragged, cheeks vibrant, beloved. 'Have you been going to the Rose?'

Cullen went bright red. ' _No_ ,' he said. 'I'll... ah... I'll tell you some other time.'

Hawke had already lost interest. She nudged him into his chair. ‘My turn,’ she announced, and hopped off his desk to kneel before him.

Perhaps she saw the nervousness in his eyes.

She kissed him. He caught her in his arms and held her, suddenly afraid he would never have another chance to do so. The old wave of anxiety flared in his chest. Teeth, flashing by candlelight. His own voice, screaming obscenities.

‘Shh,’ Hawke said, and he realised he was mumbling his thoughts out loud. He burned them in silence.

She had him stripped down to the trousers he wore beneath all the templar regalia. She had very fast fingers. His laces were coming undone, his fingers tangling desperately in her hair, her head lowering over him.

Her mouth found him. She slid her lips and tongue down, a tight, hot ring that made him almost sob. The room was filled with the sound of his own breath, heavy and hot.

She pressed his hand to the side of her face, held it there, her eyes on him. Her mouth slid lower.

Cullen felt himself drifting into a warm haze of agonizing pleasure. He felt himself quickening, and tried to pull away from her.

'Hawke,' he gasped, 'I'm... I can't--' and she placed a hand on his hip, holding him there gently, running her fingers over his skin while her tongue and her lips moved and she closed her eyes and leaned deeper into him.

He was on the edge of terror, finally ebbing away into the exhilarating pulse of ecstasy, when there was a very loud, insistent knock on the door.

In a flash, Hawke had her armour and herself stuffed under his desk, leaving Cullen to drag his tunic back on and pray nobody noticed his dishevelled state or his looming excitement.

‘Knight-Commander!’

‘Yes, yes,’ Cullen muttered as he opened the door. ‘What is it?’

‘I have news, Ser.’

‘Yes!’

‘Word from Orlais. There's talk of an Exalted March, Ser.’ The fear in the young man's voice was palpable.

‘What?’

‘To investigate the events of…’

‘Yes, I remember those events. If there’s nothing else, you can go.’

The junior templar left in a hurry. Cullen could already sense the unusual, metallic tang in the air, faint though it was. He’d had years to become extremely good at recognising Hawke’s particular energies. He went to the desk, looked underneath.

She was already gone.

**THE ROSE**

 

Perfume rose in the air as evening yawned into night at the Blooming Rose. Jethann stretched and studied his hair in the mirror, tousling his hair just so. It was a slow night for him.

The door burst open. A figure dressed in a black hood and cloak stormed into his room. A woman.

The hood fell away, and Jethann’s jaw dropped.

‘Champion... Haw… Viscountess.’

She wasted no time with words. The cloak fell off her shoulders. She wore nothing beneath the cloth. Jethann swallowed. He had often thought about her in the long years since he had first met her, spent more than a few nights pretending his clients had her face.

He wondered for a second if she were a desire demon come to corrupt him.

She went down on her knees before him, ripping the stays off him. Her mouth was on him. Jethann was so confused he almost came into her mouth right then, before he remembered he was a professional.

Whatever he’d imagined tonight, it hadn’t involved the Viscountess of Kirkwall on her knees with his cock shoved down her throat. She seemed utterly desperate for him, or for... somebody. He groaned involuntarily. It felt so good. She gasped around him. Her lips fluttered, her throat pulsed. He should be paying her, should pay her to come back every night...

The Champion pulled away from him and said, 'Make me scream.’

Jethann swallowed.  _Yes_ , he should be paying her for the pleasure. Instead he took her and threw her down onto the bed, pinning her down, throwing her knees apart roughly. He hadn’t risen to become one of the Blooming Rose’s most popular attractions by not learning how to read his clients’ needs.

‘I want to scream,’ she told him, gasping into his neck. She was already wet, as though she had been  _occupied_  before appearing in his room. ‘I want to forget. _Now_.’

Half-terrified, Jethann obeyed and forced himself into her, all at once. She did scream. She gripped him so hard he almost lost control, something that never happened. Instead he bit his lip and started thrusting, forcing her hips into the mattress, fast, hard, deep strokes that had her gasping for breath and clenching her fingers in the flesh of his back. He wanted to know who had sent her his way. A noble? One of her constant companions? There were too many possibilities. Gods, he wanted to ask, but the rules were practically branded into him, and it was becoming increasingly hard to think coherently as she writhed beneath him. He couldn’t believe he was inside her at last, pushing harder and harder until they were both gasping in mutual desperation.

Finally Hawke shuddered and choked out a name. Jethann’s eyes flew wide open.

Now  _that_ , he thought, was interesting.

She made him take her three more times that night, each time goading him harder until they were both dripping wet and raw with pleasure and agony, and she paid him a week’s wages for the privilege.

‘Come back anytime, Hawke,’ he said as she put her robe on and made to leave.

She smiled. Her eyes didn’t reflect the curve on her lips. Then she was gone.

 

**EPILOGUE**

 

In the days that followed, when Kirkwall cried for a Champion who had flown, Jethann offered up a silent prayer of heartfelt gratitude every time he passed the Gallows, or caught a glimpse of the Knight-Commander, whose face was always sad and solemn as he walked the city streets. He often wondered if he would receive a visit from the man who had put the Viscountess in such a state, if perhaps he would receive the same treatment she had practically begged for.

He never did.

 

 

The Exalted March never came to fruition. The Viscountess had taken wing, leading the hunt elsewhere, haunting trails all over Thedas.

Chantry agents came to question the new Knight-Commander, asked him about the Keep's formal ball, about reports of the Viscountess turning on his arm.

He only said, 'It was a brief dance, and nothing more.'

 

**OLD TOWER ON THE LAKE**

 

Across the Waking Sea, so near and yet the very world away, the weathered tower of Kinloch Hold rose out of silent Lake Calenhad. The lights in the spiraling windows flickered out one by one. Ascending the ancient stone stairs, Knight-Commander Greagoir smiled at the youngest apprentices as he passed, nodding them on to their rest, snuffing out the candles as he climbed the stairs to his chambers.

There was a letter on his desk. He recognised the seal, stamped with the insignia of the Kirkwall Order. The Knight-Commander's seal.

Greagoir sat down with a heavy sigh and unfolded the letter. He knew the hand that had written it, knew the boy who had learned his letters in the library late at night, struggling to form the words, face outlined by light, haloed in faith.

By the candlelight, by that firm, steady script, perhaps he came to know the man. The young templar, broken and angry. The new Knight-Commander, who sat in Kirkwall, who wrote of reform and peace.

Greagoir set the letter down on his desk, and pressed out the candle flame between his fingers. Perhaps he would write, on the morrow. In the silence of the slumbering tower, in moonlight, the faintest of smiles brushed his lips.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It doesn't end here, I promise.
> 
> ON TO SKYHOLD
> 
> Thank you again for sticking with this unbearably slow burn and for all the support! I can't tell you how much that means to me. I went back and fixed a lot of shametypos so if you do see any that I missed, please let me know.
> 
> I realized halfway through that this had somehow become Cullen's angst-laden story, and I rolled with it, I rolled with it all the way down to the vasty depths of Kirkhell.  
>  
> 
> sidenote: despite Hawke siding with the Templars, I chose the game's sided-with-the-mages option, which goes (pasting from DAWiki) 'Fearing that Divine Justinia V was planning an Exalted March on Kirkwall, Hawke and their companions left Kirkwall to spare its denizens and also to divide the Divine's forces should she send them to hunt for them.'
> 
> I really hope this came off as more plausible than the explanation the templar path gives.
> 
> If you became Viscount from siding with the templars, the whole subsequent 'red templars kicked Hawke out of Kirkwall' plotnote is really badly-dealt with in DA:I. Hawke just dealt with the _entire_ Gallows, including Harvestorsino and Statuedith, has Cullen as new Knight-Commander on her side and we're supposed to believe a bunch of templars on red lyrium could do anything about that? Oh wait, I forgot, Hawke also killed the main boss (although Corypheus really doesn't deserve that role) of DA:I too.
> 
> ELTHINA NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO.
> 
> ...I'll probably end up writing a fic about that someday involving copious mounds of cawkeangst, my favourite thing in all the land. Actually, I just want to write a fic about Seneschal Bran telling red templars 'no'.
> 
> ...every time I try and make sense of certain DA2-related plot points I basically end up just picking up my keyboard and smashing it into my face repeatedly.
> 
> Enough rambling from me! AND SKYHOLD
> 
> http://archiveofourown.org/works/6842326/chapters/15619582
> 
> in the meantime let's all listen to more angsty wonderful sad!Cullen-appropriate music! http://m.youtube.com/watch?v=nJV5Xj8agY8

**Author's Note:**

> Leave comments and kudos and I will love you forever :)


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